Which states have the most electric cars?

In recent years, electric vehicles have been widely covered, not least because of their growing popularity. Americans across the United States are switching to electric vehicles (EVs). There are various reasons for this, but the main ones are the desire to reduce fuel emissions and take advantage of financial incentives offered by state and federal governments.

It has become common knowledge that California is the state where electric vehicles are most popular, with over 400,000 units sold between 2008 and 2018. But where are the best places to live in the US if you own an electric car? Which states have the lowest cost of refueling or the most charging stations?

We have collected a large amount of data to rank each US state according to different statistics, and explore each data point in more detail below.

Sale of electric vehicles

The most obvious place to start would be the number of sales. States with more EV owners will be more motivated to accommodate them by improving their EV facilities, thereby making those states a better place for EV owners to live. However, the states with the highest sales rankings are, unsurprisingly, the states with the largest populations. So we decided to look at the annual sales growth in each state between 2016 and 2017 to find out where the growth in EVs is greatest.

Oklahoma was the state with the largest sales growth from 2016 to 2017. This is a particularly impressive result as the state does not offer its residents incentives or tax breaks to purchase an electric vehicle, as is the case in many states.

The state that saw the least growth in sales between 2016 and 2017 was Wisconsin, with an 11.4% drop, even though EV owners were offered tax credits and credits for fuel and equipment. Generally speaking, the only other states that saw a drop in sales were either the far south, such as Georgia and Tennessee, or the far north, such as Alaska and North Dakota.

Interestingly, California is in the bottom half of this category, although that's somewhat understandable given that EV sales are already well established there.

The popularity of electric vehicles by state

The topic of sales prompted us to wonder which electric vehicles were the most popular in each state. After some research, we have put together a map below illustrating the most searched EV on Google in each state.

While some of the cars featured here are reasonably priced electric vehicles like the Chevy Bolt and Kia Soul EV, most of them are more expensive than many people can afford. One would expect the most popular brand to be Tesla, since it is synonymous with an electric car, but surprisingly, the most popular electric car in most states is the BMW i8, a hybrid sports car. Coincidentally, it is also the most expensive car on the map.

The most popular cars in the 2nd and 3rd most states are both Tesla models namely the Model X and Model S. Although both of these cars are not as expensive as the i8, they are still quite expensive.

Of course, these results can probably be explained by the fact that many people looking for these cars aren't actually going to buy them; they may just be looking for information about them out of curiosity.

Fuel costs - electricity vs. gasoline

An important factor in car ownership is the cost of fuel. We thought it would be interesting to compare eGallon (the cost to travel the same distance as a gallon of gasoline) to traditional gasoline. The state that ranks first in this regard is Louisiana, which charges just 87 cents per gallon. Interestingly, Louisiana tends to suffer from other statistics - for example, it ranks 44th in annual sales growth and, as we'll find out below, has one of the lowest number of charging stations compared to other states. So it might be a great state for eGallon prices, but you'll have to hope you live within driving distance of one of the public stations or you might get in trouble.

Louisiana and the rest of the top 25 are very closely related to each other - the difference between 25th and 1st place is only 25 cents. Meanwhile, in the bottom 25, the results are more scattered…

The state with the highest EV fuel prices is Hawaii, where the price is $2.91 per gallon. Nearly a dollar more than Alaska (2nd from the bottom on this list), Hawaii doesn't seem to be in the best position. However, the state does offer discounts and exemptions for electric vehicle owners: Hawaiian Electric Company offers time-of-use rates for both residential and commercial customers, and the state provides exemptions from certain parking fees as well as free use of HOV. lanes.

You may also be interested in the difference in cost between petrol and electric vehicles if you are considering changing your vehicle. In this regard, the top-ranking state is Washington, with a significant $2.40 difference, which, as you can imagine, would have saved a lot of money over time. On top of that big discrepancy (mostly due to the low cost of electric fuel in that state), Washington also offers some tax credits and a $500 rebate for customers with qualified Tier 2 chargers, making it a great state for electric vehicle owners.

Number of charging stations

Fuel availability is also important, which is why we ranked each state by the total number of public charging stations. However, this does not take population into account - a smaller state may have fewer stations than a larger one, because there is less need for them in large numbers. So we took these results and divided them by the state's population estimate, revealing the ratio of population to public charging stations.

Vermont ranked first in this category with 3,780 people per charging station. On further examination of the state, it only ranked 42nd in terms of fuel costs, so it's not one of the cheapest states to live in if you have an electric car. On the other hand, Vermont also saw significant growth in EV sales between 2016 and 2017, which is likely to accelerate further positive development of the state's EV facilities. Thus, it may still be a good state to follow its development.

The state with the most people at one charging station is Alaska, which is not surprising considering there are only nine public charging stations in the entire state! Alaska's position is getting even weaker because, as mentioned earlier, it ranks second in terms of fuel costs. It also ranked 2nd in number of electric vehicle sales in 4th year and 2017th in sales growth between 2nd and 2016. Clearly, Alaska is not the best state for electric vehicle owners.

The following statistic displays each state's EV market share (in other words, the percentage of all passenger cars sold in 2017 that were EVs). Similar to EV sales statistics, this provides insight into the states where EVs are most popular and therefore more likely to prioritize EV-related development.

As you would expect, California has the highest market share with 5.02%. This is twice the market share of Washington (the second largest state), which shows how much more common they are compared to any other state. California also offers a huge amount of incentives, discounts, and discounts for electric vehicle owners, so it almost goes without saying that this would be a good state for electric vehicle owners. Other states with high EV market share include Oregon (2%), Hawaii (2.36%) and Vermont (2.33%).

The state with the lowest EV market share is Mississippi with a total share of 0.1%, which is not surprising given that only 128 EVs were sold there in 2017. As we have seen, the state also has a poor ratio of charging stations to population and average annual sales growth. Although fueling costs are quite low, this does not seem like a very good state of affairs for EV owners.

Conclusion

So, without further ado, here's our order of the best states for EV owners. If you'd like to see our methodology for creating ratings, you can do so at the bottom of the article.

Surprisingly, California didn't come out on top—the 1st-place state was actually Oklahoma! While it had the smallest EV market share of the 50 states, it scored high due to low fuel costs and high share of charging stations relative to the population. Oklahoma also saw its highest sales growth from 2016 to 2017, giving it the win. This suggests that Oklahoma has great potential as a state for electric vehicle owners to live in. Keep in mind that the state does not currently offer any benefits or incentives to its residents to purchase an electric vehicle, although this may change over time.

California is in second place. Despite having the highest EV market share and one of the highest charging station-to-population ratios, the state has suffered from average fueling costs and poor year-on-year sales growth in 2-2016.

3rd place goes to Washington. Although its EV market share was average and its year-on-year sales growth was not strong, this was offset by a large proportion of charging stations relative to the population, as well as particularly low fuel costs. In fact, if you switch to an electric car in Washington, you'll save $2.40 per gallon, which could equate to $28 to $36 per tank, depending on the size of the car. Now let's look at the less successful states...

The results at the other end of the rankings aren't particularly surprising. Alaska ranks last with just 5.01 points. While the state's fuel costs were just average, it performed very poorly on all other factors: it was very close to the bottom in EV market share and year-on-year sales growth, while its position was at the bottom of the rankings. charging stations sealed his fate.

The remaining 25 poorest groups are fairly tightly clustered. Many of them are actually among the cheapest states in terms of fuel costs, ranking high in this regard. Where they tend to fall is in market share (the only real exception to this rule is Hawaii).

We decided to focus on just a few factors that can give you an idea of ​​which US states are most fond of electric cars, but there are countless others that could have an impact. What circumstances would be most important to you?

If you would like to see more information about our data, as well as their sources, click here.

methodology

After analyzing all of the above data, we wanted to find a way to correlate each of our data points with each other so that we could try to create a final score and figure out which state was the best for EV owners. So we standardized each item in the study using minimax normalization to get a score out of 10 for each factor. Below is the exact formula:

Result = (x-min(x))/(max(x)-min(x))

We then summed the results to arrive at a final score of 40 for each state.