Spot The EV: These Are The EVs I bumped Into In The USA, Part 2
In the first six months of 2023, over 670,000 EVs were sold in the USA, with over 80% of those fully electric vehicles as reported in a recent article here on CleanTechnica, The report adds that it took 8 years for the first million EV sales, but now more than a million have been sold in just the past 12 months. Pretty cool!
After I read that report, it got me thinking about just how much change I have noticed on the streets of some cities in the USA after some recent visits. Comparing my encounters with random EVs on the roads on two recent visits, six months apart, really made me see just how much progress is being made. Note that I will restrict my comparison to the exact same places and shopping centers I visited in those two separate visits and also note that no real scientific method will be applied here. I am just going by how easy it is now to randomly spot EVs without searching for them with a magnifying glass, as was the case about 13 or so years ago.
I visited New Jersey in February and again in July. In just a space of 6 months, I can definitely say electric cars are way more visible on the roads of NJ. I had seen a lot of them in February, as well as 6 months before that in mid-2022. Following my visit February, I wrote that I also spotted a lot of Teslas in all the places I visited, although they didn’t appear to be as many as in the California areas I visited. Which Teslas did I see? Well, most of them. I saw Model S, 3, X, and Ys, both old and new models, standard range models, long range models, and performance models, as well as Plaid models. I also spotted that the Hyundai IONIQ 5 stood out as well. It seems to be a popular EV. The old Hyundai Kona also made some cameo appearances. Ford Mustang Mach-Es also were relatively easy to spot, and BMW i4s also seem to have a following. I was really excited to see a Mercedes Benz EQS SUV. I really like this one, and hopefully one day when I land on a pile of cash, I can get one. It’s a Mercedes and it’s electric! I also spotted some BMW iXs, i4s, VW ID.4s, and some of Audi’s e-tron variants, as well as the second generation Nissan Leaf, BMW i3, Kia, and eNiros.
Now during my visit July, I spotted all those models again, but this time there were a whole lot more of them. It’s like you spot them way more frequently now. Teslas are everywhere, and this time it seemed like NJ is starting to look a bit like California, where Teslas are ubiquitous, it seems. I also saw a lot of BMWs and more of the EQS SUVs. I really like the Mercedes Benz EQS SUV. Following my visit in February, I also wrote that in all the cities I visited (I visited 5 cities in February), I didn’t see any Ford F-150 Lightnings, I didn’t any Rivians, and I didn’t see any Lucid Airs. Could it be they are not yet so common? Maybe I will see some next time. Well, turns out that during “next time,” I did get to randomly spot all of those. I was particularly excited to randomly spot the Lucid Air and some Rivian R1S SUV. I really like the look of the Lucid Air.
I also spent quite some time in Washington, D.C., in July and while I was there, I spotted all these EVs, as well as a whole lot of Chevy Bolts! The Uber X I got on arrival in DC just happened to be electric — it was a Hyundai Kona. Then over the course of my stay, I intentionally ordered Uber Comfort Electric on all trips, and they all happened to be Tesla Model 3s. It’s great to see more EVs on the road in these parts of the USA.
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