The Bay Area is leading the national shift to electric vehicles
California is leading the national shift to electric vehicles. And the Bay Area has led California.
As I recently reported for The Times’ climate desk, San Jose and San Francisco had the highest EV adoption rates among major U.S. metropolitan areas last year. They also topped the list in 2021 and 2019.
Electric cars, pickup trucks and SUVs accounted for nearly 40 percent of new car registrations in the San Jose region last year and about 34 percent in San Francisco, according to data from S&P Global Mobility, an auto market research firm. By comparison, EVs represented less than 10 percent of registrations in the New York region, and 3 percent in Detroit, America’s automotive capital.
Today I’m sharing new data, shown in the map above, that provides an even more detailed look at which zip codes in the Bay Area are leading the transition.
Some of the areas with the highest shares of electric vehicles are associated with the EV industry (see: Fremont, where Tesla has a factory). But more often, high electric vehicle penetration correlated with higher incomes and with a higher ratio of single-family homes to apartments.
In affluent suburbs like Los Altos and Saratoga, more than half of new cars registered last year were electric. In lower-income areas such as North Richmond and East Oakland, this share was closer to 15 percent. The lowest rates of all tended to be in the more rural zip codes north of the Bay Area, such as those near Ukiah.
That pattern reflects a national trend. Americans who have made the switch to electric vehicles so far tend to be wealthier and younger than average and more likely to live in urban or suburban areas, research shows. Many buyers say they are motivated by environmental concerns, and some by an interest in the latest cutting-edge technology.
That demographic profile is changing, experts say, but slowly.
To combat climate change, the Biden administration and many state governments want to accelerate the transition to electric vehicles. That’s because cars, SUVs and pickups powered by gasoline or diesel fuel together constitute one of the largest sources of planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. (They are a major source of also other harmful air pollutants.)
California regulators passed strict auto emissions standards in 2022 that would essentially phase out gasoline car sales in the state over the next decade. Several other states have done so followed suit.
However, many consumers still have reservations about switching to electric.
The lack of widespread and reliable public charging stations is one of the biggest obstacles, experts say. That partly explains why small towns and rural areas with few charging stations have some of the lowest rates of EV use in the country. But even people in urban areas can have trouble getting plugged in if they live in an apartment complex instead of a single-family home with a garage.
“Being able to charge at home is what continues to separate the EV experience from being quite easy to being quite difficult,” Ken Kurani, an electric vehicle researcher at UC Davis, told me.
Also the Bay Area, which leads the nation in electric vehicle registrations leader in public charging infrastructure. But A study that looked at access to public charging stations in California, found “major disparities” based on income and race: Lower-income neighborhoods with black and Hispanic majorities tended to have less access to public chargers than whiter, wealthier neighborhoods. This trend was more pronounced in areas with a higher percentage of multi-unit properties.
Another major problem for many consumers is the high price tag on many electric vehicles.
Federal tax credits are available for used electric vehicles and for a limited list of new vehicles. Last year, California moved its own popular EV rebate program to focus more specifically on lower-income car buyers. And the state and many local governments are pushing for it close the loading gap.
The Bay Area is “leading the way” in electric vehicles, said Ted Lamm, leader of the EV Equity Initiative at the UC Berkeley School of Law. That gives the region the opportunity to draw a road map for the rest of the country.
“The challenges we face here are things that will happen elsewhere years later, ideally with less friction,” he told me. “We often figure out the kinks so others can do it more easily.”
Nadja Popovich is a climate reporter and graphics editor for The New York Times.
If you read one story, let it be this one
He was in prison. She was in Covid lockdown. They freed each other.
Tell us
We are in the process of putting together ours California soundtrack for years, and have recorded most of the hits. Which songs do you think still need to be added?
Tell us at CAtoday@nytimes.com. Include your name, the city you live in, and a few sentences explaining why you think your song deserves to be included.
And before you go: good news
“The Last Repair Shop,” a documentary about a musical instrument repair shop that has been tuning, servicing and repairing instruments for Los Angeles public schools for decades, won an Oscar for best documentary short film on Sunday night.
It is also the first Oscar for The Los Angeles Times, which distributed the film together with Searchlight.
The workshop is run by the Los Angeles Unified School District, one of the few districts in the country to provide free musical instruments and repairs to public school students. The heartwarming film follows four of the workshop’s twelve technicians as they repair more than 80,000 instruments.
The documentary was created by Ben Proudfoot and Kris Bowers, an alumnus of the Los Angeles Unified School District who discovered an early love for music while playing the piano in school.
“’The Last Repair Shop’ is about the heroes in our schools who often remain unsung, ungrateful and unseen. Tonight you will be sung, thanked and seen,” Bowers said during his acceptance speech on Sunday.