OLYMPIA, Wash. – Electric and plug-in vehicle sales accounted for 19 percent of Washington purchases last year, a six percent increase from 2022.
State and national benchmarks for electric vehicle (EV) sales are part of a broader framework of regulations intended to address the climate emergency.
According to the United Nations Environment Program, international leaders have not sufficiently decreased greenhouse gas emissions to prevent wide-spread environmental and economic consequences.
“Every fraction of additional warming above 1.5°C will bring worsening impacts, threatening lives, food sources, livelihoods and economies worldwide,” the program reports.
One way that governments are attempting to decrease emissions is encouraging EV sales. The Biden Administration has set an ambitious goal of making 50 percent of car sales electric by 2030.
On the state level, all new passenger vehicles in Washington will be required to produce zero emissions by 2035.
While tax incentives from the Inflation Reduction Act and tax credits for plug-in and electric sales have contributed to increased sales, the national charging infrastructure is still lagging behind gas station accessibility, making buying an EV a more difficult pitch for rural consumers.
American and European auto manufacturers have taken a step back on EV development, and argue that growth in EV sales will not be as fast as 2021 and 2022 projections.
“What we saw in ’21 and ’22 was a temporary market spike where the demand for EVs really took off…It’s still growing but not nearly at the rate we thought it might have in ’21, ’22,” Ford EV Chief Operating Officer Marin Gjaja told CNBC.
While small, wealthy European nations like Sweden have achieved much broader EV adoption and are implementing the charging networks to support those changes, the US continues to struggle to foster the same levels of adoption.
However, the Washington Department of Ecology touted data which illustrates that the Evergreen State is achieving higher levels of EV adoption than the national average.
“2023 was a record year for sales of electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles in Washington…sales data show EVs and plug-ins accounting for about 20 [percent] of all vehicles sold in Washington last year. That’s more than double the national sales average of 9.5 [percent],” the department said.
The Department of Ecology pointed to Inflation Reduction Act incentives and state regulations as factors motivating the shift toward hybrid and electric methods of transportation.
As climate change continues to exert disruptive pressure upon policymakers across the globe, state and national leaders continue to work against the clock to wrestle-down greenhouse gas emissions.
