If you think you’re seeing a lot more Tesla cars on the roads, you’re right, as the automaker accounts for more than half of the record number of electric cars sold so far in California this year, according to the California Energy Commission.
Zero-emission cars accounted for 17.7% of all new cars sold in the state through the first three quarters this year.
The energy commission reported 250,486 zero emission vehicles, or ZEV, were sold statewide from January through September. And digging deeper, Austin, Texas-based Tesla Inc. (Nasdaq: TSLA) accounted for 152,835 of those sales.
The highest number of ZEV sales are in Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties, along with strong sales in Santa Clara and Contra Costa counties.
The Sacramento region saw 11,085 ZEV sales of all makes, with 6,753 of them being Teslas.
The other top ZEV sales locally were Toyota Motor Corp. (NYSE: TM), Ford and Kia models. The highest selling non-Tesla locally is the Ford Mustang Mach-E, which Ford Motor Corp. (NYSE: F) reported is sold out for 2022 due to high demand.
Locally, Sacramento County logged ZEV sales of 6,210 through the first three quarters, followed by Placer County at 2,831, El Dorado County at 962 and Yolo County at 907.
California accounts for 42.6% of all ZEVs sold in the nation, with a cumulative 1.4 million ZEV sales.
Zero emission vehicles include electric vehicles, plug-in hybrids and fuel-cell electric vehicles, which all can function without gas. Hybrids that use gas to power an electric battery motor don’t figure into ZEV calculations.
High gasoline prices following the breakout of war in Ukraine may have spurred sales of electric cars, along with more models from more manufacturers. Nearly all major manufacturers now offer electric models. California is now just 12 years away from basically requiring all new cars sold in the state to be ZEV.
In 2020, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order mandating that all new passenger cars and trucks sold in California after 2035 must be zero-emission vehicles. The rules codifying that order were enacted in August this year by the California Air Resources Board.
