Western States Led the Way in Electric Car Adoption

OCT. 29, 2026 - California had the largest share of households (about 14%) that owned or leased electric vehicles (EVs), more than twice as many as the national estimate (5.5%), according to new 2025 American Community Survey (ACS) 1-year estimates released today by the U.S. Census Bureau.

This marks the first time the ACS has released data on households by types of vehicles, such as electric vehicles. Nationally, about 122.3 million households reported having access to at least one vehicle and, of those, about 7.3 million said that at least one of these was an all-electric or plug-in hybrid electric vehicle.

"Western states have led the way in switching to electric vehicles. California overall had the highest rate of EV adoption per household, followed by Washington, Hawaii and Nevada," said Tricia Holley, a survey statistician at the Census Bureau. "And when we look at the county level, Santa Clara County in California led the nation with about 24% of households reporting having an EV."

Outside of California, Boulder County, Colorado (13.9%); Loudoun County, Virginia (13.9%); King County, Washington (13.4%); and Douglas County, Colorado (12.6%) (not statistically different from each other) had among the highest percentage of households with at least one EV of all counties.

This was also the first year the ACS collected and released data on housing unit sewer systems throughout the United States. Nearly 80% of homes were connected to a public sewer, while 19.2% had septic tanks and 1.1% used some other type of sewage system. More information about newly released sewage data can be found in our new America Counts story, Sewers or Septic Systems? How U.S. States Treat Wastewater.