Automotive consultant and technology firm Urban Science on Thursday released its 2022 midyear Automotive Franchise Activity report, which showed substantial increases in U.S. electrified vehicle sales in the first half of the year, particularly in the Southeast.
Urban Science said it included plug-in hybrids in the findings.
The report said that while overall industry sales dropped in the first half, sales of electrified vehicles skyrocketed 41 percent in a year-over-year comparison. The share of EV sales also increased, to 6.2 percent of all new-vehicle sales in the U.S. from 3.6 percent in the first half of 2021.
Two states drove the increase in EV sales, Urban Science said. California had the highest volume, with 133,920 in the first half of 2022 — representing one-third of total national EV sales. Florida came in at No. 2 and saw a 64 percent year-over-year increase to 33,006 EV sales.
The Southeast region overall has seen a 52 percent increase in EV sales during the period, Urban Science said.
“This uptick in Florida has led the entire Southeast region to be the fastest-growing region right now for customer popularity,” Mitch Phillips, global director of data at Urban Science, told Automotive News.
New York, Texas and New Jersey had the next highest number of EV sales. Urban Science did not provide data on which states had the least.
