EVs Accounted For 5.6% Of U.S. Market Last Year, Tesla Continues To Dominate

Electric vehicles accounted for 5.6 per cent of new light-vehicle registrations in the United States last year, a significant jump from the 3.1 per cent of 2021, and while various new carmakers entered the EV race, Tesla continues to dominate.

Data from Experian reveals that some 756,534 new EVs were registered in the United States last year, a 57 per cent increase. This came despite sales across the overall market falling by 11 per cent to 13.6 million.

Tesla’s share of the EV market fell from 71 per cent to 64 per cent with it registering a total of 484,351 new vehicles locally throughout 2022. That represented a 41 per cent jump over 2021 and was spearheaded by the Model Y that shifted 228,313 units, Auto News reports. Of the five best-selling EVs in the U.S. last year, four of them were Tesla models, namely the Model 3, Model Y, Model S, and Model X.

Ford was the second-best seller of electric vehicles in the U.S. in 2022, capturing a 7.5 per cent slice of the market. It beat out Chevrolet with its 4.8 per cent share of the market, sitting above Kia with 3.8 per cent and Hyundai with 3.5 per cent.

Nope. Load shedding ain't for me. I don't like the idea of other folks deciding if I get a charge. It's too much like getting gas in the Carter years (i.e. odd-even gas rationing).

If you own your own home and live in the south, you might consider an EV with some home solar. With our all-electric home and doing most of our driving in the EV, we pull only 20% of our power from the grid. The other 80% is from our solar system. That includes the power used for charging the EV (obviously not when we drive the EV away from home on a trip). That's one reason we drive it a lot (had it 8 months but driven it 17K miles already). We don't worry about gas prices when we think about driving across town and back or going on a 100-mile round trip day trip picnic. Nor do we worry about it adding to our power bill if 80% of our power is free anyway.

In fact, the EV adds to the throughput of the solar system to make the solar and EV work collectively better than the sum of the parts. That's because the EV doesn't have to be charged every day. If we drive 30 or so miles in a day and come home, we may or may not charge it that day depending on if the solar power coming in is good (and also depending on our driving plans the next day). Eventually a few days in a row of 30 or 40 mile round trips will drain the EV battery enough to where we'll charge it even if we have a few rainy days in a row (no free solar power, thus pulling power from the grid and adding to our power bill). But that's not often. Usually there's a free solar day or two to charge up the EV for free before we get to that point. That's one way the EV gives us a freedom that the ICE pickup doesn't give us.

But ICE cars have their strong points too. We drive the ICE pickup on long trips through areas that have no chargers. That's a way an ICE car gives us a freedom EV's don't.

By having one of each, we have the best of both worlds. Those options would be better if the Dims let the free market decide who buys what kind of car (or maybe both).

We do most of our driving in the EV. Because of that, and because my now all-electric house gets 80% of the power we consume from our home solar system, my retirement financial planning doesn't involve a lot of gray area with the unknowns of sky high energy inflation. I wish I had a fix for inflation in other costs.

The only energy we buy is the 20% of electricity we buy from the grid, plus gas for the little bit we drive the ICE pickup, plus power to charge the EV if we take it on a long trip, plus little bits of other energy here and there (i.e. gas for the lawn mower, propane tank recharge for the grill). All of those energy costs combined are now a small portion of my budget. I replaced sky high power bills, sky high natural gas bills, and sky high costs at the gas pump with new fixed costs (i.e. the loan on the HELOC I took out to add solar and do other energy improvements to my house). But I can budget certain costs a lot easier than I can budget the sky high uncertainty promised by the Dims. By doing most of my driving in the EV, my transportation costs now no longer have uncertainty (except for trips) just like my home energy costs have little uncertainty.

Plus the EV brings diversification of energy needs for transportation. Even if I didn't have solar, the EV means that if the Dims make gas hard to come by or too expensive to use a lot (IMHO it's still too expensive), then we have the EV. And if the Dims make power hard to come by and/or too expensive, we can do most of our driving in the ICE pickup. That means the Dims have to work twice as hard to control our transportation dependencies. I don't like the idea of having all of my transportation dependencies in one basket. Plus, with the solar giving me most of the power we need, including charging the EV, the EV means we can still do all the local driving we want even if Dims make both power and gas hard to come by.

That's what the EV really brings to the table. I can't drill and process my own energy sources like coal or natural gas or oil. In physical science those are way better than solar. But in Dimomerica political science those energy sources are too easily regulated out of our reach either directly or through costs. Most of the energy at my home is regulated by only two people: God is in charge of the sunlight hitting my property and I'm in charge of converting that to electricity. We can count on God and me. That alone helps solar give us a freedom I didn't appreciate until it was implemented. The EV is an extension of that energy freedom into our transportation. That's why we've put 17K miles onto it even though we've owned it only 8 months with my wife retired and me working from home a lot. When it costs practically nothing to drive, every day can be a different picnic spot for lunch or whatever we feel like driving to on a whim.

My EV probably cost $7,500-ish more BECAUSE of the tax credit.

Valid point. But it is prudent to remember that a LOT of Americans are woefully inept at mathematical logic. Especially libs. So I would argue that there is still a significant number of those buyers that believe they are making out, so it is influencing them to buy EVs.

That said, and I agree with you, the practical effect of the "credit" is a transfer of money from the government to the EV car makers with the consumer as the conduit. Another shell game hustle on dumbed down people.

Besides being despotic, EV mandates are also to some degree crony capitalism, payoffs to those who benefit from the whole scam.

Not to mention, you can’t fight a war with battery powered vehicles. This is never mentioned in the debate. ICE cars and engines will be around for a very long time.

True that. Though this article is about consumer purchases, not military needs.

I do, however, see a limited use for EV's in the military. Maybe for stealth missions (they run quietly) or maybe as a backup transport in case of gas supply failure. My 64 solar panels bring in 20kW. Even in February (thus less sun) I get on average 4.2 peak sun hours. Thus on average I get 20kW X 4 = 80kWh of power from my solar each day in February. Assuming a loaded truck gets 1 mile per kWh (less than 1/3rd of the throughput I get from my EV crossover), that's probably a 100 mile round trip (carrying the load the first 50 miles loaded consumes more power than coming back empty). I'd hate to depend on that all the time; gas or diesel powered trucks are way more dependable. But I could see having a spare EV truck handy for mission critical transports in case gas supplies are cut off by the enemy.

>> The mining for battery metals alone is far worse than the lifetime pollution from a normal car. <<

That you accept that sentence at face value is proof of being a Luddite. It’s not even wrong; it defies correctness. How do you throw a single value on pollution? Do you include mineral recovery from expended batteries? Which is worse, a ton of carbon dioxide or an ounce of sulfur or a gram of mercury? The largest environmental impact from salt-pan mining is water consumption, not pollution; Are you some how valuing that relative to pollution? Do you count the pollution from operating the car, or of obtaining the metals its made out of also? Do you count the recycling of THOSE metals? How do you score the energy needed to recycle rusting, painted steel back into iron? Is noise pollution an issue? Does pollution matter less if its in a barren, unpopulate region (like a salt pan) rather than a densely, smog-afflicted region like Los Angeles?

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