Electric vehicle sales in the United States have broken records so far in 2021, despite supply chain issues

Electric vehicle sales are on the rise, well above previous quarterly and annual levels, both in California and in the United States as a whole.

The information comes from the California electric vehicle defense organization Veloz, in its quarterly sales update released Thursday. That’s good news, especially as Capitol Hill is considering not only a pending infrastructure bill with EV charging allowances, but a future bill with more EV provisions. And it helps frame President Biden’s tighter fuel and emissions savings standards, on track to 50% sales of electric and plug-in hybrid batteries by 2030, which is possible even for skeptics.

To reach this 50%, full-range automakers will need to make their plug-in vehicles more widely available. But they must also continue to make inroads in California, the state with the most vehicle sales. For the past two years, growth in electric vehicle sales has stalled – since 2018, when Tesla’s Model 3 fever hit the state and there have been record annual sales of around 157,000 vehicles. electric (including plug-in hybrids, as Veloz does, but rounding these numbers to the nearest thousand).

Fortunately, there has been a turnaround. Earlier this year, as the pandemic continued and a number of vehicles, especially high-tech vehicles, faced production issues related to the supply chain, sales of electric vehicles took off. been well above those of the equivalent quarters for 2019 and 2020.

According to Veloz, sales of electric vehicles in California were over 61,000 in the second quarter of the year, for a cumulative total of around 121,000 so far in 2021. That’s already more than three-quarters. of the 2018 record, with half of the year remaining.

Nationally, nearly 159,000 electric vehicles were sold in the second quarter, for a total of around 310,000 for the first half of the year, already very close to the 2020 total of around 322,000 for any the year.

This is a good sign that the market stagnation seen in the United States in 2019 and 2020 has picked up its course, likely as a result of the introduction of an abundance of new consumer electric vehicle models widely available over the years. last six months, including the Ford Mustang Mach. E, Volkswagen ID.4 and Chevrolet Bolt EUV.

According to the California Energy Commission, battery-electric models make up about 1.3 percent of the state’s vehicle fleet, while plug-in hybrids make up about 0.9 percent, while nationally, BEVs and PHEV represent about 1%. Based on sales for the quarter, approximately 1 in 10 new vehicles sold in California was a BEV or PHEV.

In July 2020, Deloitte pointed out something potentially problematic for the US EV market: that it “is almost single-handedly driven by the success of the Tesla Model 3, which alone is responsible for nearly half of all sales. of VE ”.

What a difference a year makes. Since then, the United States has seen the introduction of the Model Y, but it’s not just Tesla. With several other mainstream-looking EVs on the way soon, a viable market is starting to take shape.