News Article
State of the State: EV Sales Heading into 2025
March 12, 2025
Whether it’s on the news or in your inbox, you’ve likely encountered a lot of discourse around declining electric vehicle (EV) sales. But reality paints a different picture, and we’re here with the data — both nationally and for North Carolina — to back it up.
National View
Overall, EV sales are increasing year over year, with 2024 bringing the three highest U.S. sales months to date.
- December 2024: 167,000 registrations
- September 2024: 145,000 registrations
- November 2024: 140,000 registrations
For comparison, here are 2023’s top-performing months:
- December 2023: 138,000 registrations
- July 2023: 134,000 registrations
- September 2023: 124,000 registrations
As the strongest EV sales month so far, December 2024 saw a significant jump compared to the rest of 2024 (Figure 1), which is typical for that time of year and could reflect buyers trying to take advantage of federal EV tax credits. On the other hand, there’s a noticeable dip in February 2024, but previous years have shown February to be a lower-performing month in general. Additionally, December 2023, a couple months prior, had been the leading month to date at that point.
How do EV registrations compare to the overall market? To explore this, we look at EV market share — calculated as the sum of new fully electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicle registrations divided by the number of total new vehicle registrations. National EV market share has hovered around 10% and peaked at almost 12%. A market share of 10% means that around one in every 10 vehicles purchased is an EV. This metric has about doubled from what it was a few years ago and continues to increase each year.
State View
So how does the data look in North Carolina? In 2024, the state exceeded 100,000 EV registrations, far surpassing Gov. Roy Cooper’s Executive Order 80 goal of reaching 80,000 by 2025.
Sales performance has been quite consistent over the last several years (Figure 2). Almost 20% of all EVs on the road were purchased in 2024, according to NC Department of Transportation registration data, and this doesn’t include the final quarter of the year. Furthermore, roughly half of all EVs registered in North Carolina have been purchased in the last two years. In other words, North Carolina didn’t have 50,000 EVs on the road until September 2022, and we added another 50,000 in just 23 months!
In 2023, when total vehicle registrations in North Carolina didn’t budge, EVs still grew about 30% compared to the year prior. This doesn’t mean that every month is record-setting, but EVs have proven to be quite robust in the face of high interest rates and periods of low supply, such as in 2020 and 2021.
North Carolina’s EV market share of new vehicle sales has also consistently grown (Figure 3). In 2024, it hovered around 7%, with a jump to almost 8% in Q4.
We expect these numbers to continue to rise, especially now that we have a used EV market that offers competitively priced vehicles under $30,000 and solid options in nearly every model segment — SUVs, three-row SUVs, cars and trucks (though we’re still waiting on some compelling minivans, in our opinion).
Where is all this adoption occurring in North Carolina? In many cases, it’s happening exactly where you might think: in and around major metro areas. However, there are many more-rural counties also showing significant increases in EV adoption.
Figure 4 depicts counties by their percentage of EV registrations — darker red counties have a higher population of EVs. The map also reveals the raw number of EVs registered by county, with brighter circles representing a greater number. Table 1 spotlights the top five counties across these two categories.
So, EV sales are doing just fine, and we’re excited to see the 2025 numbers as those roll in. We appreciate every one of our Plug-in NC members, ambassadors and stakeholders who has made the commitment to drive electric and share the joys with their communities!
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