EV sales have soared in WA; our map shows where they’re registered

It only took a month of driving a gasoline-powered car from Tacoma to Seattle nearly every day for Meesa Pedrozo to realize it wouldn’t work for the family’s budget.

Pedrozo’s daughter had just started a competitive dance program at the Pacific Northwest Ballet, which included 1½ to 2½ hours of class six days a week, and the 70-mile round-trip drive was straining Pedrozo’s wallet.

So the family bought a 2017 Chevrolet Bolt for $22,000 (including a new battery for $6,000). Now the 42-year-old acupuncturist has been zipping up and down Interstate 5 with 200 miles of range, mostly charging up at parking lots, garages and the Safeway four blocks from home.

Pedrozo’s Bolt is one of 150,000 electric vehicles registered in Washington, a segment of passenger vehicles that has grown sixfold in five years. While EVs are still relatively expensive and public charging resources in the U.S. lag behind China and Europe, a crush of people have switched from gasoline-powered cars and some, like Pedrozo, are quick to answer questions from curious bystanders.

Washington has been among a few states leading the EV transition, with 18% of its new car sales in the first half of 2023 being either fully electric cars or plug-in hybrids, which can be powered by both electricity and gasoline, according to a report by an energy research division of Bloomberg. Only California has sold a higher proportion — ballooning from around 8% of new car sales being EVs in 2019 to 25% in the first half of this year, said Corey Cantor, an EV analyst who authored the report.

“No matter how you slice it, Washington state should feel pretty good about where it’s at in terms of its place in the EV transition compared to other states,” he said. Nationwide, 9% of new car sales in the first half of 2023 were EVs. 

While some economists and business analysts believe electric vehicles have passed an inflection point and are in the early stages of mass consumer adoption, especially in states like California, Washington, Oregon and Hawaii, they still make up a small portion of the total vehicles on the road.

According to the report, only 2% of Washington’s passenger vehicle fleet are EVs, behind Washington D.C., Hawaii and California, where 3.5% of passenger cars are EVs.

Washington’s EV numbers

EV ownership in Washington is concentrated west of the Cascades with about half of the state’s 150,000 EVs registered in King County, and Snohomish and Pierce counties following behind, according to an analysis of public records from the Washington Department of Licensing.

The total number of EVs in the state represent sixfold growth since 2017 when the state only had around 23,000 EVs. Tesla remains the most popular brand followed by the Nissan Leaf and the Chevrolet Bolt and Volt.

In King and San Juan counties, EVs make up about 5.6% of registered vehicles.

Even within Seattle and King County, data shows that EV car ownership is concentrated in wealthy neighborhoods, like West Seattle, Magnolia and Mercer Island.

Perhaps unexpectedly, Sodo has the largest number of EV registrations in King County, with 534 vehicles. According to DOL, 86% of these vehicles are registered to businesses and most are owned by county government or car manufacturers or dealerships. While cars being sold at dealerships are unregistered, loaner vehicles and vehicles the dealership plans to sell or transfer out of state are registered.

In Washington, cars are the biggest source of air pollution, contributing about 22% of total air pollution and 45% of the state’s greenhouse gas emissions, according to the state Department of Ecology. Last year, Gov. Jay Inslee announced a plan, following California, to phase out the sale of new gas-powered vehicles by 2035. The plan calls for a 35% reduction of vehicle emissions by 2026 and 68% by 2030.

Those plans, along with Washington having some of the highest gas prices in the nation and relatively low electricity rates, are all reasons some EV owners say purchasing one could pay for itself.

Life with an electric vehicle

Over the past nine years, Brian Scally has driven four different EVs — for everything from commuter errands to camping weekends and road trips. His long-distance trips have evolved from carefully planned stops charted in a spreadsheet to his car asking whether he wants coffee at the next charging spot.

“It hasn’t quite got to booking me lunch yet,” Scally said with a laugh.

The 52-year-old electrical engineer, who lives on a boat in Ballard, has never had a home charger. He said he typically starts the week low on battery, around 20%, and works up to 70% or 90% if he’s headed out of town, charging a few hours while he’s at work, buying groceries at QFC or Fred Meyer or while at dinner.

Travis Church, 37, said he bought his first EV, a $7,000 used Nissan Leaf with a range of 80 miles, also for cost savings in 2016. Now the engineer is on his fourth EV, a Tesla Model 3.

In Church’s view, most EVs will work for anyone looking for a commuter vehicle, but if you’re looking to road trip, the Tesla is the best bet. While moving between Virginia and Washington, Church said the Tesla system of directing the driver where to charge, when and for how long is so optimized that he was able to beat his wife driving a gas-powered Subaru to the hotel each night. 

For Scally, who has driven his kids to college at UCLA and in Montana, using third-party chargers wasn’t difficult, even when he was driving his first EV, a BMW i3 with a range of around 100 to 120 miles; though he admits he likes to stop every hour or so anyway while driving long distances. 

In 10 years, Scally said he only had three close calls due to vandalized chargers. In one case, a store clerk in Montana allowed him to plug in his car to a wall outlet, which allowed him to charge enough to get to the next charging station. Otherwise, Scally, who now owns a Rivian, has found there are chargers every 30 miles on the West Coast and expects the charging network to improve.

Even though nearly 60% of vehicle trips are less than 6 miles long and only around 5% of trips are longer than 30 miles, according to the Department of Energy, questions over a vehicle’s range are common.

“People have misperceptions of the mileage of their bladders,” Church said, adding that people often don’t know that EV’s have better handling and more torque than a gas car.

The affordability and number of EV models has improved since 2015, when most were more than $70,000, Cantor said. If someone is set on a pickup truck, there’ll be a big price gap and EV’s tend to be pricier than gas-powered vehicles. There are few EVs widely available in the $25,000 to $35,000 range, he said.

New cars in general have also become more expensive and larger, with the average new vehicle price in the U.S. increasing 25% in the last three years and only one available under $20,000.

“The more EVs you sell, the more are going to trickle down into the used market over time, but for everyone, it’s not easy to buy a new car,” Cantor said.