California Electric Vehicle Sales Rose to 22% Share in 2024, Dominated by (a Declining) Tesla

California dominates the US electric vehicle scene. It has about 5 times more electric cars on its roads than any other state, and it’s also the #1 state in the nation in terms of electric cars per capita. California accounted for 31.1% of US EV (ZEV) sales in 2024. By itself, it would have been the second biggest electric vehicle market in the world! (Just barely ahead of the UK and Germany, as well as France and others.) So, what’s happening in California is broadly significant for the world EV market.

Unfortunately, EV market share in California just barely increased in 2024, from 21.7% to 22%. However, it is a little complicated, so let’s get into the details. For one, also note that overall auto sales were down slightly (by 0.3%), while EV sales went up slightly (by 1.2%).

The dominant brand for EV sales in California is Tesla, even more so than across the US broadly. Tesla accounted for 52.5% of EV sales in the Golden State last year. However …

That’s down from 60.1% in 2023, and the volume of sales declined from 230,010 to 203,221. So, even though the overall EV market grew a little bit, Tesla’s sales were down considerably.

Before getting into more details, here are those two charts again with Tesla excluded, just in case you want to more easily compare other brands:

Actually, that chart right above is very useful for making a key point. Excluding Tesla, 8 of the top 10 EV sellers saw their sales increase in 2024 compared to 2023. Only Chevrolet had a sales decrease. It’s basically those models and half a dozen others that have seen significant sales growth that has made up for Tesla’s sales decline, a bit more.

The two questions for the California EV market going forward are: 1) how much will these other brands grow their EV presence and help with overall market growth in the months and years to come, and 2) how much will Tesla sales continue to decline or, potentially, rebound and grow again?

For the time being, though, Tesla is still the big dog in the California EV market, and it is still the second biggest auto brand in the state (barely).

The trend at the top isn’t super pretty, though. #1 Toyota’s sales increased year over year (4.4%, or by about 12,000 unites), #3 Honda’s sales increased year over year (11.5%, or by about 20,000 units), and #2 Tesla’s sales declined year over year (-11.6%, or by about 27,000 units).

In 2023, the Tesla Model Y was the best selling vehicle in the state and the Tesla Model 3 was the second best selling vehicle there. However, as you can see above, although the Model Y was still #1, the Model 3 dropped to #4. And this is after a big model refresh! The model saw a huge drop, from around 83,000 Model 3 sales in 2023 to about 53,000 in 2022.

Looking only at SUV and truck sales, the Tesla Model Y still had almost double the sales of the #2 Toyota RAV4. That is without a doubt a stunning achievement, especially at this stage of the model’s lifecycle. The other good EV news from this ranking is that the Hyundai IONIQ 5 got into the … top 12. Yes, I had to extend the ranking a little bit to get this glimpse of another EV.

In the ranking of top selling cars (sedans), the Model 3 dropped to second place, narrowly being passed up by the Toyota Camry. Will the Camry sit on top of this ranking for years yet again, or can the Model 3 claw back the gold medal? Can any other electric cars finally climb onto the list as well?

Narrowing down to their niche categories, the Model Y obviously demolishes the competition in the “luxury compact SUV” class, and the Model 3 crushes the competition in the “near luxury cars” market. The nice thing is we have another electric model in this latter category as well, the BMW i4. Can it climb into second place in 2025? Will any other EV models join?