State-by-state EV adoption rates show divide

The nation’s transition to EVs is fracturing by region. While EV purchases are rising overall, adoption is declining in the states that already had the lowest rates, according to J.D. Power.

Nationwide, 21 percent of consumers who have an EV option that matched their model preference purchased an EV in the first half of this year, compared with 20 percent a year earlier, according to J.D. Power’s August E-Vision report.

But at the state level, there is a glaring division between EV-friendly and EV-lagging states. In the bottom 10 states for EVs, the pace of adoption sunk 24 percent from a year earlier. In the top 10 states, pace of adoption grew 1 percent.

(J.D. Power divides EV retail share by market availability to calculate adoption. Availability measures whether an EV exists at the price and size consumers want and from their preferred brand.)

EV share is growing overall. Battery-electric sales made up 8.6 percent of retail share nationwide in June, compared with 5.7 percent a year earlier, according to J.D. Power.

States that invest in EV charging infrastructure and offer incentives have higher adoption rates, Elizabeth Krear, vice president of the practice at J.D. Power, told Automotive News.

Six of the top states J.D. Power ranked for EV adoption overlap with states that had the most policies for scaling deployment of EVs and building charging infrastructure, according to a July scorecard by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. Those states are California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Washington, Oregon and Maryland. The council’s State Transportation Electrification Scorecard found that southern states that have been recipients of some of the biggest EV and battery investments lag in policies that encourage EV adoption.

Ten states have incentives on top of federal spiffs, according to J.D. Power. Four of those 10 — California, Colorado, Massachusetts and Maryland — are among the states with the highest EV adoption rates.

The overlaps show the impact of state policy on EV adoption.

J.D. Power expects the state-by-state divide to continue over the next decade. By 2035, the firm expects the U.S. to reach 70 percent EV retail share. EV share in California, today’s EV leader, will hit 94 percent, while North Dakota, which has the lowest EV adoption rate today, will reach 19 percent, J.D. Power said.

Charging infrastructure in California drastically eclipses infrastructure in North Dakota. California has 14,976 charging stations with 40,370 ports as of Sept. 1, according to the Department of Energy’s Alternative Fuels Data Center. North Dakota has just a sliver of that at 88 charging stations with 187 ports.