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I just wrote about 4th quarter US EV sales. As expected, they don’t look great. Sales dropped a ton in the 4th quarter after Republicans killed the $7,500 US EV tax credit. However, we all know that the 3rd quarter was a blockbuster quarter for US EV sales for the same reason. People rushed to buy electric cars before the tax credit was eliminated. So, how did sales look overall across 2025, taking both the 3rd quarter boom and the 4th quarter bust into account?
Sales were down just slightly in 2025, dropping from 1,301,411 sales in 2024 to 1,281,798. They were up compared to 2023, and up tremendously compared to 2022. But I’ll come back to that in a minute.
Interestingly, counter to what happened in the 4th quarter, Tesla sales were down a bit year over year, while non-Tesla EV sales were up somewhat year over year. (In the 4th quarter, Tesla sales were up a bit year over year, while non-Tesla EV sales were down a bit year over year.) Funny how the full-year trends were reversed compared to the 4th quarter trends.
Looking at model leaders, as usual, the Tesla Model Y was far ahead at #1 and the Model 3 was far ahead of the rest at #2. Then you’ve got four mid-market crossovers, the Chevy Equinox EV, the Ford Mustang Mach-E, the Hyundai IONIQ 5, and the Honda Prologue. After that, we’re well under 40,000 vehicles sold, which is really not that exciting.
Okay, let’s have a closer look now at year-over-year comparisons. As you can see, sales were down very slightly compared to 2024, by just 2% or 19,613 units. Compared to 2023, sales were up a bit, by 6% or 69,040 units. Looking back further, that’s where things really look good again. Despite the horrible 4th quarter, sales were up a massive 58% or 162% (472,000 or 793,000) compared to 2022 and 2021, respectively.
So, long term, EV sales growth in the United States still looks good. That’s strong growth since 2021 and 2022. However, the past couple of years have not shown a big surge forward. And, of course, 2025 sales even declined a bit. What’s in store for the coming years?
Below are interactive, embedded versions of the charts above.
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