Why Seattle Residents Are Turning To Electric Vehicles Now

There’s been a lot of attention to electric vehicles, especially in the last several months as gas prices have risen. (I know it’s temporary.) The used EV market is skyrocketing. On my last trip to the Seattle area a few weeks ago it seemed like electric vehicles were everywhere. Of course, lots of Tesla’s, but also Chevy’s, Ford’s, Ravian’s, Kea’s, and several other less popular brands. 

But even after seeing all of these electric vehicles, I didn’t really think of Seattle as an “EV capital”. What does that really mean?  

According to seattletimes.com,
‘according to the latest market-research data from Nielsen. Between 2022 and 2025, the number of local households that owned or leased an EV more than doubled, growing from around 64,000 to 165,000. 
Expressed as a percentage of the nearly 2.2 million households in our market, that’s an increase from 2.9% in 2022 to 7.5% in 2025.
Seattle is well ahead of the national average in EV adoption. Across 83 U.S. market areas, the share of households that own or lease an EV grew from 1.3% to 4% during this period.’ 

As impressive as that increase is, it’s still just a fraction of all the vehicles on the road, but it is an indicator of where the Pacific Northwest is going, at least on the west side of the mountains. We don’t really have any numbers for Eastern Washington; at least not that are readily available. But I would think that cheaper electricity and an expanding charger network are making electric vehicles very attractive in Eastern Washington, especially in Chelan, Douglas, and Grant counties. 

So, let’s look at some numbers. 

EV adoption in the United States is way behind most other western countries. Some states seem to be more interested in electric vehicles than others. The national average right now is not quite 10%. 

The state with the most new registered EVs is actually Colorado with a 26% adoption rate. For the United States, that’s actually pretty impressive. 

States with the lowest EV adoption rate tend to be in the Midwest and the Deep South, averaging a percentage adoption rate of less than 5%. 

Let’s look at the cities. 

Gas prices in Washington state are the second highest in the country, and that seems to be spurring a lot of interest in electric vehicles, especially used ones. If you look at the list of cities with the highest adoption (per household) of electric vehicles, Seattle actually shows up at #7, 7.5% 

2 California cities show up in the top five, San Diego at 8% adoption, and the number one area with the highest percentage of adoption as a city is the San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose area at 11.2%.  

It seems a little odd to me, but I guess it makes sense that Honolulu Hawaii was #2 on the list at 9.8% of adoption. 

I’m not sure how I would accomplish the research, but I would certainly like to see what the numbers are for Eastern Washington. Especially in counties where electricity is extremely cheap. 

Expensive gasoline, Cheap electricity, for some of us, the decision is not that hard. It’s just whether we can afford to make the choice.