California has led the way in the electrification of the US’ vehicle market with one in four of all new vehicle sales in 2024 being an EV, higher than the country-level penetration rate of 10%. As the most populous state, it commands a large proportion of the total vehicle market (11%) but this is dwarfed by California’s share of the USA’s EV market which stood at nearly 29% in 2024.

How distributed is the EV uptake within California?

Looking at California’s EV landscape, two key state-level features stand out:

  1. The Bay Area and much wider surrounding area form a clear cluster of high-penetration rate counties;
  2. A healthy number of counties have a strong EV presence, without complete domination in hubs like San Francisco or LA.

Although the Bay Area is clearly a major region for high EV share, the influence has spread widely and counties on the opposite side of the state like El Dorado and Placer, both of which turned Republican in the 2024 election, have an EV share at or above the state average.

The coastal counties down to Los Angeles, Orange, and San Diego all continue to present a strong EV share above the average for the state, but when comparing them to other key counties in the state you may expect them to have a higher penetration rate.

In recent years, the EV share of California has begun to stagnate, struggling to push past the 25% mark. Whilst bringing many regions up to a good level of EV share is important, the high population counties around the Bay Area and LA will always be looked on as trailblazers in the space and need to see progress to the next level to lead the way and continue to drive up the state average.

California will continue to be crucial to increasing the US EV share as a whole for years to come. Rho Motion’s Monthly EV & Battery Database and Monthly Sales Assessment follows these key trends, tracking BEV and PHEV sales as well as providing country-level penetration rate data.