With more people than ever becoming aware of the effects of their consumer choices on climate change, many have made the switch to electric vehicles (EVs). While Norway has the largest EV use in the world, followed by Iceland and Sweden, the US is driving mass sales both at home and abroad (thanks, Tesla!), and as of 2018 had over one million registered EV vehicles on the road. Sales of EVs in the US are projected to skyrocket within the next 5 years, with projections of over 4 million EVs on the road in California alone! The question is, are we really ready for this massive transition to EVs?

The infographic below is based on research from STORAGECafé, a website featuring storage units for possessions and vehicles, . It shows the best-equipped metropolitan areas in the US for EV ownership — both all-electric and plug-in hybrid models were considered. The 100 most populous metros were ranked using 14 weighted metrics to obtain an overall score for each. These calculations demonstrate that locations in California and further up the West Coast rank very highly in terms of how well they cater to owners of EVs. San Jose wins overall, with go-ahead policies that encourage EV driving, having around 74,000 electric cars and about 1,550 EV charging stations — both of these figures are the third highest in the country, but they are even more impressive considering that this metro area has a much lower population than many others. Also in the San Jose metro’s favor are its efforts to improve air quality and the fact that approximately 10% of its freeway lanes have been assigned as HOV (high-occupancy vehicle) to help support EV take-up. This helped it take seventh place in terms of environmentally-friendliness, which contributed to the overall score.  

The San Francisco metropolitan area, in 2nd place, boasts about 122,400 EVs, over 2,500 public charging stations, and good environmental awareness. Metro Seattle lands the 3rd spot with fewer EVs on the roads but even better infrastructure to accommodate them and a high attention to environmental issues. The Los Angeles metropolitan area beats all others in terms of EV ownership, counting more than 230,900 of these vehicles, which ism, that’s roughly 13% of all the EVs registered in the US. But the West Coast is not alone in leading the way, with Washington DC and Phoenix boasting even greater EV ownership than Seattle and Atlanta. In fact, it’s DC that hashaving managed to create more EV infrastructure than any other metropolitan area in the top 25 of this list. But San Diego and New York were found to have the 4th and 5th highest numbers of EVs, respectively, demonstrating that California still impresses the most, as even a relatively small metro there is better equipped for EV driving than the nation’s largest.

About the Author:

Francis Chantree is senior writer at STORAGECafé, creating content in many areas including business management, lifestyle and recreation. He also has experience as a technical writer and in the academic field of computational linguistics.