There Are Now 44,313 Electric Vehicles Registered in CT

The updated count includes registrations through the end of last year. It was released by the Department of Motor Vehicles, which is statutorily required to release updated numbers semi-annually.

This is a count of registered EVs and the trend chart above represents a snapshot as of the start of each year. This is different than sales. It includes existing registrations, plus added registrations that have occurred via the purchase of a new or used vehicle, or due to an EV owner moving into the state, less vehicles that have turned over and are no longer registered in CT.

DMV provides nothing in the way of detail on their site, just the overall count. It typically includes battery electric vehicles, plug-in hybrids, electric motorcycles, and fuel cell vehicles.

For all the doom and gloom in the press about people not buying EVs, the number was up a respectable 47% over one year ago. The registrations occurring in the second half of the year were 31% higher than in the first half. And the number of EVs registered in 2023 was 54% higher than the number registered in 2022.

We have published the details about vehicle make and model, city, per capita data, etc. that underlie the total in the past, and we will do so again if we are able to obtain the information.

July 2023 Dashboard With Full Interactivity

Link to the dashboard.

We have published a new dashboard of all EVs registered in CT, updated for the data released as of July 1, 2023. The dashboard has slicers and full interactivity on each page. There are currently 18 pages. More may be added subsequently, Scroll down for pagination and page titles. From the landing page, it is necessary to either click the map image or the “view interactive content” button to spawn the dash.

Included in the dashboard are EVs by make, model, city, county, per capita, % of all vehicles and some trending. Trends only go back to January 2022. As always, we have to live within the limitations imposed by the files available to us. There are just too many differences between this file and the older ones to easily integrate them.

This file contained a total of 35,883 registered EVs, which is a bit lower than the 36,269 noted on the DEEP EV page. Some of the difference can be explained by the dashboard file containing only BEVs and PHEVs, whereas the DEEP data include 61 electric motorcycles and 3 fuel cell vehicles. The other 322 are MIA. Also, there were ~500 records with blank geo fields, so the sum of the cities is less than the total.

Net Registrations

Keep in mind, the data are net registrations. Net registrations include:

• Existing vehicles
• New vehicles
• Newly registered used vehicles
• People who own EVs moving into the state

Minus:

• People getting rid of their vehicle
• EV owners leaving the state

This data point is up 42% from one year ago, which is not bad, but at minimum needs to be consistently maintained if the state is to reach its EV objectives.

There are also some pages with newly registered vehicles, that is vehicles registered in the first half of this year. This enables the ability to see emerging trends such as the increasing BEV market share and which brands are gaining traction.

Interactivity

Clicking on a chart element on a page will cross filter with any other charts on the same page. This doesn’t happen too often as the charts get too small when presented in this format. Most pages have slicers (check boxes). Checking a box will filter the data. To check multiple boxes, depress the command key (Mac) or Ctrl key (PC).

Please reach out to the EV Club if you would like help using the data.

The early data are in and the number of EVs registered in CT as of December 31, 2018 has increased by 78% relative to one year ago.

We do not have much detail below this high-level information, but we know a few things and can surmise more.

The total number of EVs registered as of 12/31 is 9289, up from 5206 one year ago. There were 5063 PHEVs registered and 4208 BEVs. (This doesn’t 100% tie back due to a few outliers). The PHEV number was up 69% and the BEV number was up 91% relative to 2017.

Even though we do not have granular data, we know that 2018 was the year of the Tesla Model 3. The large increase and higher proportion of BEVs relative to past years is no doubt due to the Model 3, which has blasted through all previous EV sales records. Our opinion is that this number is also possibly a bit understated. There is a lead-lag to getting a Tesla registered in CT due to the fact that it is still not legal for Tesla to open stores in CT. Consequently, Teslas must be purchased out of state and then the registration has to be transferred. We have one member of our club who was upset that the transference did not occur until after Jan. 1, which cost him part of his tax credit. It is likely he was not alone.

Below is a chart that shows the difference in EV sales by make in 2018 relative to 2017. It is based on analysis of national data published in Inside EVs.

Our club is brand agnostic. We want to see people buy EVs and we don’t care which one they choose. The change for Tesla is obviously light years ahead of every other company. But the bigger point, or question, is about the lack of traction on the part of all of the other manufacturers. It looks like they aren’t really trying and we hope that can change. Almost all of them have made numerous and ambitious announcements of EVs in development. Audi has purchased a 60 second spot in the Super Bowl to advertise EVs. Based on the going rate, they will have spent over $10 million for the privilege.

The legacy automakers will argue that their inability to generate EV sales momentum is due to lack of consumer interest exacerbated by relatively low fuel prices. Tesla is demonstrating that this is not the case (and doing so with a form factor – a sedan – that has been falling out of favor with consumers).

When one sees numbers like these, and being aware of the aggressive EV adoption goals in the Multistate ZEV Action that CT has signed on to, it is hard to justify throwing up barriers that inhibit sales by Tesla or other companies which sell direct, such as Rivian, the maker of an electric pickup.

We hope that Audi is throwing down a marker, and we hope the other companies follow through in a serious way on their EV pronouncements. In the meantime, enabling Tesla and other new EV manufacturers to open stores in CT might induce the legacy carmakers to compete in the showroom and not the legislature.

EV Ownership Deep Dive in CT

Sales of EVs nationally have continued on an upward slope in 2017, up 44% year over year for the first 5 months relative to 2016. And the availability of models has come quite a ways since the 1898 Riker pictured in the photo above. 32 different plug-in models had sales, compared with 26 in May of 2016. New models that hit the market in late 2016 and early 2017 include the Chevrolet Bolt, a revamped Toyota Prius Prime, BMW 530e, and Mercedes C350e. Of these new introductions, the Bolt is a battery electric vehicle while the others are plug-in hybrids. And, of course, we await the Tesla Model 3, deliveries of which are expected to commence sometime in the third quarter of this year.

In this blog post, the WECC takes a deeper dive into the status of EV ownership in Connecticut.

Technical Information

The information in this post comes from the Department of Motor Vehicles and includes all plug-in vehicles registered in Connecticut as of February 2017. The data set contains no personally identifiable information, just make, model, model year, and city. There is a link to spawn the dashboard at the bottom of the post.

The list was procured by club member Bruce Becker via a Freedom of Information Act Filing. The dashboard was built by Barry Kresch.

Please note that this is a database of registrations which is not the same thing as sales. The year is the model year of the car, not when it was purchased or registered. This affected Chevrolet in particular because GM had a short run of the 2016 model year Volt and the 2017s were on sale in CT by the spring of 2016.

There are currently 4636 plug-in vehicles registered in CT. (There are approximately 2.3 million vehicles in total registered in the state, so, yes, you can still be an early adopter!) This number includes battery electric cars as well as plugin hybrids. Going forward in this post, these are simply referred to as “electric” and “PHEV” respectively. PHEV vehicles have smaller battery packs than electrics and can run on gasoline when the battery is depleted. They are sometimes referred to as “series hybrids.” PHEVs come in many different configurations in terms of how the engine works and the size of the battery pack. In other words, the saying “your mileage may vary” applies in a really big way, but you can at least bank it being high. There is one vehicle, the BMW i3 REX, which has a very small gasoline engine (about 3 gallons) which is an optional range extender intended for emergencies. For the purposes of this analysis, it is considered an electric since that is how it is intended to be used.

Highlights:

• There are 30 models of electric/PHEV vehicles from 19 manufacturers registered in CT. Keep in mind that there are a number of EV models that have only been available on the West Coast as manufacturers play the zero-emission credit (ZEV) game to comply with the letter of the law for the California Air Resources Board requirements. Even some vehicles intended for a national market get rolled out gradually across the country (the Chevrolet Volt and Bolt both being examples).
• The largest moniker in the state is Tesla, which accounts for 29% of registered plug-in vehicles (and 62% of electrics). Tesla is the leader even though the company is not permitted to have a sales showroom in CT. For the third-year running, a bill to enable Tesla to sell direct in CT did not make it through the legislature. (The legislative session ended on June 7.)
• Chevrolet is second with a 21% share. This all comes from the Volt as the Bolt was not yet available in CT at the time the data was sourced. A third Chevrolet model, the SparkEV, is not sold in CT.
• Toyota was the only other automaker above 10%. They came in at 17% with their Plug-in Prius and the newer version, Prius Prime.
• The largest individual models were the Tesla Model S (24%) and Chevrolet Volt (21%).
• The lion’s share of EVs is in Fairfield County with 46%. Hartford County and New Haven County follow at 18% and 17% respectively.
• The cities leading in EV counts are Greenwich, Stamford, Westport, Fairfield, and Norwalk.
• PHEVs represent 54% of the total.

The dashboard is interactive. There are 3 pages. Pagination is at the bottom. If you click into one of the checkboxes it will filter the data on that page to that box (or boxes). If you want to check multiple checkboxes, then depress the control key while clicking. (It is a little tricky to click multiple boxes on the web dash. It sometimes needs a double click.)  If you click into an element in a chart, it will cross-filter the other charts. If you hover over a pie slice or a bar, counts and/or percent share will display. See the dashboard here.

The dashboard is best viewed on a desktop/laptop computer. An example of one of the charts is in the screenshot below.

We hope you find it interesting!