California hit a new record last year with 21.4% of new cars being all-electric, and once again Tesla led the pack with the two best-selling cars in the state, the Tesla Model Y and Tesla Model 3. But Toyota narrowly maintained its leadership as the top-selling brand in the state, with Tesla nipping at its heels.
The data was released yesterday by the California New Car Dealer’s Association (CNCDA) in their quarterly Auto Outlook. This was the Q4 and full-year report, reflecting on trends in auto sales for the full year in the state that leads the US in EV sales.
Compared to a national market share of 7.5%, EVs commanded 21.4% of sales in California. But just a couple years ago, California was down at ~7% of new EV sales, while the rest of the country was at ~2% – so we like to check in on CNCDA’s data every quarter to get a look at where the trends for the rest of the country might be going soon.
But California’s share of nationwide BEV registrations was down. Not long ago, California accounted for more than half of the EVs in the United States, but in 2023 California accounted for 33.8% of US BEV sales. This means that the rest of the country is picking up pace in EV sales, and that EVs are no longer the sole purview of California. This is an expected trend, but a welcome one – we don’t need California to keep hogging all the health benefits of EVs.
Leading the pack, as expected, were Tesla’s vehicles. The Model Y and Model 3 both outsold the competition by a wide margin – with Model 3 holding a 15.3% share in passenger cars (a 61% lead over the Toyota Camry, which had previously been the best-seller in California for decades) and Model Y holding a 10.8% share in light trucks, more than double its highest challenger, the RAV4, with a 4.7% share.
However, since Tesla only has a few models and Toyota has many, Toyota still maintained the crown for most sales in California. Toyota had a 15.7% market share for the whole year, and Tesla had a 13% market share, with Honda in third place at 9.7%.
13% means that one out of every 8 vehicles sold in California last year was a Tesla – from a company in just its 15th year of selling cars anywhere. Earlier in the year, it even looked like Tesla might be able to beat Toyota in California, as Tesla did outsell Toyota in Q2, but Toyota took back the crown in Q3 and maintained it in Q4.
One particularly interesting graph in the report is the share of alternative powertrain vehicles by type of dealership – Direct or Franchised. In this case, “Direct” refers to dealerships owned by the automaker in question, the vast majority of these sales coming from Tesla.
But in the chart we can see an increasing number of BEVs being sold by franchised dealers, as other manufacturers have finally gotten their BEV programs off the ground and are now selling a variety of vehicles, many of which only hit the market in the last model year or two. A majority of BEVs were still sold direct, but franchised dealer sales are catching up.
Between BEVs, PHEVs, and FCEVs, a full quarter of vehicles could access some sort of dedicated non-combustive energy source. Adding hybrids into the mix (you know, the cars that Toyota loves to pretend are electric, even though they aren’t), 35.9% of vehicles had an electric motor in them.
This was on the back of a tick down in EV share quarter over quarter, from 22.3% to 21.1%, and a tick up in hybrid share, from 11.7% to 13.3%. Plug-in hybrid share held roughly steady at 3.6%, up from 3.4%. Plug-in hybrids were buoyed by the exceptional popularity of the Jeep Wrangler PHEV, which is the 4th-best-selling car in the state with a plug on it, behind the two Teslas and the outgoing Chevy Bolt. The Wrangler PHEV outsold the RAV4 Prime almost two to one.
Tesla maintained its position as one of the companies with the best sales growth over the course of the year, up 24.6% from the previous year. Though this level of growth was lower than it has been in the past. With Tesla already being well established in California, it’s inevitable that growth percentages will slow down over time – or perhaps California, moreso than other states, is getting tired of Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s nonsense.
Tesla’s share of California’s BEV market dropped from 71% to 60.5%, another expected result of other vehicles entering the market. This was still higher than Tesla’s share of the overall US EV market, which stood at around 55% for the year.
But the winner in terms of sales growth was Rivian, which saw a 142.7% increase year over year. Big numbers like this are to be expected out of a new company with new models, but Rivian’s ramp up in production and sales this year was impressive nonetheless, with the company even raising (and then beating) production guidance during a year when media spent a lot of time falsely claiming that EV sales were down.
And on that point – in 2022, EVs made up 16.4% of the EV market in California, whereas in 2023 they made up 21.4%. That certainly looks like an increase to me, not a decrease. Meanwhile, one media narrative we haven’t heard much of is how ICE car sales actually are not growing. While auto sales as a whole were up in California by 11.9% in 2023, that’s because 190k more “electrified” vehicles (BEV/PHEV/HEV) were sold in 2023 than 2022, for a 2023 total of ~638k, whereas sales of pure combustion vehicles were flat at ~1.1 million. So in a year where the auto industry saw a significant recovery, most of that recovery, at least in California, was led by rising electric vehicle sales.
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Kandi has become fairly well known in the US for its electric golf carts and work-focused UTVs, but the company has teamed up with Lowe’s and the NFL on something more playful: the Kandi 4P electric golf cart. Sold through Lowe’s with official NFL team liveries, this four-seat neighborhood cruiser is aimed less at the fairway and more at cul-de-sacs, grocery runs, and game-day tailgates. I spent time with a Miami Dolphins–themed 4P in South Florida to see what it can really do.
Kandi 4P NFL-edition golf cart video review
Want to see it in action? Or want to see my family decked out in head-to-toe Miami Dolphins gear?
Check out our family testing video below!
Specs, power, and hardware
Despite the “golf cart” label, the Kandi 4P is built more like a small road-going NEV. Power comes from a 5 kW motor and a big 48V 150 Ah lithium iron phosphate battery (around 7.2 kWh), giving it plenty of grunt for neighborhood speeds of around 20 mph and a lot more range than you’d expect from something this size. In practical terms, it just sips energy; I did multiple days of errands and joyrides before even thinking about plugging it in.
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Charging is refreshingly straightforward. The cart uses a J1772 inlet, so you can plug into a normal 120V wall outlet with the included cord or use a typical home EV charger if you already have one. It’s overkill for a golf cart, but in a good way.
Underneath, you’ll find single wishbone suspension in the front, rack-and-pinion steering, and four-wheel hydraulic disc brakes. There’s even a 2-inch receiver tow-hitch rated for 500 pounds of trailer weight and a mounting spot up front if you really want to bolt on a winch.
Features and practicality
Inside, the Kandi 4P feels more like a small EV than a basic cart. There’s a very large touchscreen display with multiple info pages for speed, battery, and system status (and also displays the backup camera). An NFC fob handles “key” duties, and you get proper controls for forward, neutral, and reverse, plus hazards, lighting, and a tilt-adjustable steering column with stalk-mounted turn signals and horn.
The seats are nicely upholstered and genuinely comfortable, with DOT seat belts front and rear, cup holders everywhere, grab bars for passengers, and a built-in Bluetooth speaker for rolling playlists or tailgate anthems. A flip-up windshield can be cracked for a bit of breeze or propped fully open on gas struts, and the hard roof extends enough to keep you fairly dry in the rain. I should know – I had it out driving in multiple rain storms!
Storage is better than you’d expect: a small glove box, a rear trunk, and even a front “frunk.” Between those and the flat floor, we were able to pull off a full grocery run – though we probably should have planned our bag strategy a bit better. We ended up buckling a week’s worth of grocery bags into the back seats, but a tub in the back would make a better storage area for those types of large store runs.
Is it worth it?
At $9,999 through Lowe’s with whichever NFL team’s colors you prefer, the Kandi 4P isn’t cheap in absolute terms, but it’s very much in the mix for modern, nicely equipped neighborhood carts. High-end golf carts can easily run $14,000–$15,000 these days, and they don’t always bring a 7+ kWh LiFePO4 pack, disc brakes all around, J1772 charging, and all the street-legal bits in one package. Add in official NFL team colors and logos and you’ve basically got a rolling fan-mobile that doubles as a genuine second car replacement for many households.
No, it’s not as safe as a full-size car – there are no airbags or crumple zones here. But it does have real seat belts and lights, and it encourages a more aware, less “invincible” mindset behind the wheel. For people living in communities with 25–30 mph streets, these kinds of carts make a lot of sense: lower cost to buy, dramatically less energy use, no tailpipe emissions, less wear on roads and tires, and far more smiles per mile.
Compared to an e-bike, the Kandi 4P wins on weather protection and passenger capacity. Compared to a second car, it wins on cost, efficiency, and fun. And if you’re the type of person who wants to show up to the grocery store or the stadium in a full team-liveried electric cart, this thing absolutely nails the assignment.
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In a bid to get it above the $1.00/share NASDAQ-required minimum, fledgling EV brand Polestar ($PSNY) is rumored to be considering a 1:30 reverse stock split that could see the per-share price rocket up to nearly $16.
Geely-owned Volvo spinoff Polestar is working as hard as Tesla to prove that stock prices have little or nothing to do with traditional business fundamentals in 2025.
That’s because Polestar posted a 36.5% increase in retail sales and a heady 48.8% increase in revenue (to $2.17 billion) over the year before, Polestar’s share price has plummeted more than 35% in a matter of a few weeks – culminating in an unwelcome nastygram from NASDAQ threatening to delist the company’s shares from the NASDAQ if they didn’t climb back up above $1.
In a reverse stock split, each share of the company is converted into a fraction of a share – so, if a company announces a one for ten reverse stock split (1:10), every ten shares that you own will be converted into a single share. In a 1:30 reverse split like the one rumored here, every thirty shares in Polestar would become a single share.
The reverse split increases share price, but it’s not without risk:
A company may declare a reverse stock split in an effort to increase the trading price of its shares – for example, when it believes the trading price is too low to attract investors to purchase shares, or in an attempt to regain compliance with minimum bid price requirements of an exchange on which its shares trade … investors may lose money as a result of fluctuations in trading prices following reverse stock splits.
That’s especially relevant because, despite the increased sales and revenue, the company is also posting increased losses. Through September, the brand posted a $1.56 billion net loss compared to an $867 million loss in the first nine months of 2024. The company is also getting hit hard by Trump-imposed tariffs in the US and increased downward pressure on pricing coming from aggressive post-tax credit discounts from rival brands like BMW and Kia.
If the split does happen, here’s hoping Polestar can make the most of their borrowed time and they don’t end up like Lordstown Motors or Faraday Future – two brands that have pulled similar reverse stock splits with dubious results.
You can find out more about Polestar’s killer EV deals on the full range of Polestar models, from the 2 to the 4, below, then let us know what you think of the three-pointed star’s latest discount dash in the comments section at the bottom of the page.
SOURCE: CarScoops; images via Polestar.
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With its sleek, uncluttered styling and more than 100 miles of battery-electric range before the extended range electric sedan’s gas engine kicks on, maybe the new Nissan N6 really should have been the next Maxima!
Struggling Japanese carmaker Nissan is dealing with an aging lineup and a brand identity driven more by subprime financing than any suggestion of reliability or sportiness here in the US – but overseas? The brand is rolling out hit after hit, and the latest Nissan N6 plug-in sedan promises exactly the sort of entry-level panache that could change its American fortunes.
“Under our Re:Nissan plan, we are redefining what Nissan delivers today and beyond,” explains Nissan President and CEO Ivan Espinosa. “It’s about strengthening our core, reigniting Nissan’s heartbeat, and creating products that inspire excitement and trust. It is about a sharper, more focused product strategy, a stronger brand, and a renewed commitment to our customers. Integral to this transformation is China — an essential market whose speed, technological leadership, and customer insights are setting the pace for the global auto industry.”
Developed by the Nissan Dongfeng JV in China, the new N6 is more compact that the well-received N7 BEV. In fact, the new Nissan N6, at 190.1″ long, compares nicely to the 192.8″ length of the most recent (and largest-ever) US Maxima, discontinued in 2023. Like the Maxima, the top-shelf version features modern, near-luxe features like soft, leather-like surfaces, LED mood lighting, multi-way adjustable seats, and mimosas or something.
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Mimosas or something
Mimosas; via Nissan.
The four or five passengers inside the N6 are propelled down the road exclusively by the car’s 208 hp electric motor, which is efficient enough to take you 112 miles on a full charge of its 21.1 kWh LFP battery. Once that charge is depleted, a 1.5L gas engine kicks on as a high-efficiency generator to keep the good times rolling.
Nissan says the N6′ exterior design, “features a V-Motion signature grille and expressive LED lighting at the front and rear.” And says that the car’s crisp lines give it, “a confident, dynamic presence.”
All of which sounds good on its own, but sounds absolutely miraculous when you consider the car’s Chinese price: ¥106,900 – or about $15,000 US for the base Nissan N6 180 Pro, as I type this.
Even with a nearly 100% markup to give it a $29,990 price tag in the US, I think the N6 would be a huge hit in the North American market. And – good news! – thanks to Canada’s apparent willingness to give Chinese carmakers a shot, we might find out if I’m right somewhat sooner than later.
Check out the Nissan N6 image gallery, below, then let us know what you think of the car’s US and Canadian appeal in the comments.
If you’re considering going solar, it’s always a good idea to get quotes from a few installers. To make sure you find a trusted, reliable solar installer near you that offers competitive pricing, check out EnergySage, a free service that makes it easy for you to go solar. It has hundreds of pre-vetted solar installers competing for your business, ensuring you get high-quality solutions and save 20-30% compared to going it alone. Plus, it’s free to use, and you won’t get sales calls until you select an installer and share your phone number with them.
Your personalized solar quotes are easy to compare online and you’ll get access to unbiased Energy Advisors to help you every step of the way. Get started here.
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