Barry Kresch

41% of CT EVs in Fairfield County

Hartford and New Haven Counties make up the bulk of the rest. When filtered for BEVs, there is even more of a Fairfield County skew.

% BEV by County

In terms of raw numbers.

EVs by City

In the map at the top of the post the bubbles are sized for the number of EVs in each city and the intensity of the color saturation deepens with higher EVs per capita. Below is a bar graph excerpt (due to space limitations of the cities with the highest EV count. Top cities are Greenwich (1371), Stamford (1058), Westport (890), Fairfield (729), and West Hartford (615).

EVs Per Capita by City

A number of the smaller cities, particularly in Fairfield County, rise higher in the ranks.

Make Within City

DMV separates the geo from the vehicle data. Their reason is the 14-10 privacy regulations. I think it is a stretch that PII could be deduced from city level data, but the limitation exists, nonetheless. In this chart, I attempt to knit the files together and come up with estimates of EVs by make within city. I need to use the map format to fit every city on a web page. The bar chart displays the cities with the higher EV counts, along with my disclaimer.

Political Affiliation

This line on this chart is an overlay of EV count by city and the bars are the political affiliations of the voters within each city on a percentage basis (hence, the bars are the same size). There are percentages for Democrats (light blue), Republicans (dark blue), and minor party plus unaffiliated (orange). The minor party plus unaffiliated is mostly the latter. From the looks of this, there does not seem to be a strong correlation of EV ownership with political party, a good thing in our view. This is excerpted due to space limitations.

EV Count and Median Income

This shows a much stronger correlation with income. The bars are cities sorted by median income and the line is EVs per capita (to normalize for population variation). This is also an excerpt due to space limitations. The full chart is on the dashboard.

The upper income skew is a challenge that needs to be addressed by manufacturers, EV advocates and policy makers. We want to see affordable EVs for all. Manufacturers need to serve this segment as well as the affluent. Policy makers can help with incentives and, importantly, taking steps to improve access to charging.

Finally, this is the correlation between EV count by city and public chargers. The line chart displays L1, L2, L3, and the sum of all of them. Again, this is only an excerpt due to space limitations. There is a slider in the dashboard enabling one to display all cities. There is a correlation between EV count and lower numbers of public chargers. To some degree, it is masked in the larger cities where there might be clusters of chargers, L3 in particular, at service areas.

Fairfield County is Home to 41% of EVs

7023 of 17,217 EVs in the state are registered in Fairfield County.

The map at the top of the post shows the distribution of EVs across cities. The larger the bubble the greater the number of EVs, with the top cities being Greenwich, Stamford, Westport, Fairfield, Norwalk, West Hartford, and New Canaan. These ranks don’t change that quickly but Norwalk has overtaken West Hartford. There is nowhere near enough room to display all cities in the static screenshot of the recent trend below. In the interactive dashboard, there is both a slider and a slicer to help navigate the larger charts.

Adjusting for population reveals a different rank with mostly smaller towns in Fairfield County dominating: Westport, Weston, New Canaan, Greenwich, Woodbridge, Darien, and Wilton.

The two charts below show EVs by make by city. These do not come directly from the DMV because the DMV separates the geo from the other information. I have created my own estimates based on the available data. Again, the screenshot is not large enough to display all cities and all of the makes in the legend. The dominant orange color is Tesla. Below the bar chart is the same data in map form with bubbles sized to overall EVs and the wedges representing each make. Again, it looks better in the dashboard which has more visual flexibility.

If anyone has any questions about a particular city, please email EVClubCT@gmail.com.

EVs are not uniformly distributed across the state

Fairfield County has consistently tracked at around 40% of EVs in the state and is 41% in this July 1, 2020 iteration. This compares with its having 26% of the state’s population. All of the other counties under-index relative to population.

EV Distribution by City

The top cities largely held their position in terms of the number of registered EVs with Greenwich, Stamford, and Westport in the top 3 positions. This chart excerpt shows the most recent two data points, January and July, for the largest cities. Greenwich added the largest number of any city with 69 additional EVs since January.

EVs Per Capita by City

Westport remains the leader in EVs per capita, followed by Weston, New Canaan, Woodbridge, and Greenwich. This screenshot is an excerpt of the top cities. The full list can be viewed in the dashboard (use the scroller).

EV ownership remains concentrated in Fairfield County.

The county is home to 41% of all EVs registered in the state.

EV Ownership by City

It follows then that the cities with the highest EV ownership are mostly in southwestern CT. Greenwich, Stamford, and Westport are the top three. The following chart is an excerpt displaying the highest-ranking cities.

EV Ownership by City, Per Capita

When the data are normalized for population, the ranking changes with Westport being number one, followed by Weston and Woodbridge.

Map of EV Ownership by City

This is what it looks like pictorially. The bubbles represent cities and the size of the bubble adjusts based on the number of EVs registered in each city.