California has set measures to accelerate the sale of new zero-emission vehicles in order to curb these transport emissions. The Californian government aims for all new vehicle sales to be zero-emission by 2035. The California Air Resources Board’s Advanced Clean Cars II Regulations, approved in 2022, lay out a clear timeline to reach this goal. California already boasts a large plug-in electric vehicle (PEV) fleet, with around 27.55 PEVs per thousand people in the state as of December 2022—the highest ratio across the U.S. In 2021, 522,445 battery-electric, 305,315 plug-in hybrid electric, and 10,127 hydrogen fuel-cell electric vehicles were recorded on Californian roads. These figures have been steadily increasing since 2012 despite the prevalence of gasoline internal combustion engines as the leading propulsion type—around 86.83 percent of the light vehicle fleet were gasoline vehicles in 2021.
A growing electric vehicle market and charging infrastructure
Electric vehicles held an estimated 31.1 percent of the new vehicle market in the Golden State in 2022, including 17.1 percent of new battery-electric vehicles (BEVs). BEVs with a driving range above 200 miles were the best-selling car type that year, with around 285,900 units sold in the state. Los Angeles—the leading county for overall light-duty vehicle sales in 2022—recorded the most all-electric and plug-in hybrid electric sales. However, zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs)—including PHEVs in California Energy Commission’s records, despite them having direct emissions—only represented 19.03 percent of sales in Los Angeles county, compared to over a third of sales in Santa Clara and San Mateo. Santa Clara was also among the largest BEV and PHEV sales markets, ranking among the five counties with the highest electric vehicle sales across both categories.Los Angeles and Santa Clara were also the Californian counties with the largest charging infrastructure network. There were 8,854 public chargers and around 18,161 shared private chargers in Los Angeles in 2022, most of which were Level 2 chargers using alternating current electricity to charge a vehicle at 208 to 240 volts, providing around 14 to 35 miles of range for each hour of charging. As of April 2023, J1772 was the most widespread connector type at charging locations across California, followed by locations offering CHAdeMO and CCS connectors and stations offering Tesla connectors. Tesla Destination was the third-largest EV charging network in the Golden State, behind non-networked chargers and ChargePoint Network. The prevalence of Tesla chargers is partly due to the brand’s prominence in California. Tesla was not only the Californian fully electric vehicle best-seller in 2022 but was also the second best-selling light vehicle brand across propulsion types in California, holding 11.2 percent of the new light vehicle market and only surpassed by Toyota.
State incentives to boost electric vehicle adoption
California has been heavily investing in its charging infrastructure and financial purchase incentives for consumers to promote the sale of more zero-emission vehicles. In 2022, California received nearly 56.79 million U.S. dollars from the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Formula Program to improve its charging network. The state is projected to obtain 81.72 million U.S. dollars more from the same funding program in 2023.The state also offers extensive incentives for electric vehicle purchase, home charging installation, and electric utility. These include tax credits on leased and purchased vehicles, used clean vehicle credit, and the clean vehicle rebate project, among others—such as local initiatives such as Clean Cars for All, a Bay Area Air Quality Management District incentive. The Clean Vehicle Rebate Project issued some 506,357 rebates worth in total over 1.18 billion U.S. dollars between 2010 and February 2023, after its inception in 2009. Around 67.8 percent of these rebates were battery-electric vehicles, which benefited from a total rebate amount of 878.64 million U.S. dollars across that same period. Los Angeles, Orange, and Santa Clara were the counties recording the largest volume of rebates from the program, which peaked in 2018 and 2019—the application years when it recorded the highest total rebate value and number of rebates.
The federal state’s commitment to its fleet electrification goes beyond private vehicles. This engagement includes 75 million U.S. dollars in funding allocated by the Senate to create the California Energy Commission School Bus Replacement Program, aiming to replace old diesel buses with new fully electric ones.
