Electric vehicles account for almost 10% of Californian new-car sales

Hybrid electric and plug-in electric vehicle now account for almost 10 percent (9.6%) of all new car sales in California.

Electric vehicles, which registered nearly zero in state-wide new car-sales as recently as three years ago, are now taking a noticeable market share, according to the latest quarterly report released by the California New Car Dealers Association.

CNCDA said 23,648 registrations of various plug-in hybrid models in California from January through September this year accounted for 1.7 percent of all new-vehicle purchases. Registrations of all-electric vehicles, like Nissan’s Leaf, accounted for 20,516 new vehicle sales, or 1.5 percent, during that time.

The combined total of 44,164 for the first nine months of 2014 already tops California’s electric vehicle sales for all of last year. In 2013, combined sales of plug-in hybrids and all-electric vehicles in California topped 42,000, up 500 percent from 2011.

Sales of new, standard hybrid vehicles, another segment where California leads the nation, totalled 89,486 through September this year. That represents 6.4 percent all new cars sold state-wide in the January-September period.