10 States Follow Through on Promise to Put 3.3 Million EVs on the Road

In 2013 the governors of ten states collectively agreed to boost policies and public information that would put 3.3 million electric vehicles on the road by 2025. And according to a new report, they have followed through on their promise.

Oregon Capital Chronicle writes on how Oregon, along with California, Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Islan,d and Vermont signed a memorandum to spur sales of zero-emission vehicles in their respective states. In Oregon, for example, just 300 electric vehicles were registered in 2013. Today there are more than 100,000 — about 5 percent of all new vehicles registered in the past decade.

That growth didn’t come without a cost. “Cumulative electric vehicle sales across the 10 states grew steadily in the first few years after the 2013 memorandum, but sales fully doubled from 2022 to 2024. In 2022, Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act that included a $7,500 tax rebate on the purchase of a new electric vehicle. Oregon’s own rebate program, passed in 2017, and offers up to $7,500 back on the purchase of an electric vehicle,” The Capital Chronicle reports. “One-third of all electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles registered in Oregon received one of the state’s Clean Vehicle Rebates, according to officials at the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, which distributes the rebates. The rebates have been worth nearly $100 million since 2017.”

The ten states that signed the 2013 memorandum combined with five more states that created similar programs now account for more than one third of all new EVs sales in the United States.