Where are electric vehicles more popular in N.J.? A county-by-county breakdown.
As more electric vehicle options hit the market, year by year more New Jersey drivers are opting to cut their emissions while hitting the road.
At the end of 2023, New Jersey had 154,153 electric vehicles registered in New Jersey, a spokesperson for the state’s Department of Environmental Protection said.
That number, the most recent data available, includes battery electric and plug-in hybrid cars.
The New Jersey counties with the most registered electric cars are, in most but not all cases, also those with the most chargers and people.
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The latest registration figures from the state represented a jump from just over 123,000 registered EVs in New Jersey as of last June.
It’s an increase from the total registered EVs in the state at the end of 2022 — about 91,000.
“Twelve years ago, in 2012, there were only 338 electric vehicles registered in the state,” NJDEP officials said in a summary of the new EV figures.
And yet, New Jersey needs to make more progress as it looks to require that 100% of new car sales be fully-electric starting in 2035. Gov. Phil Murphy wants 330,000 registered EVs in the state by 2025 as part of larger climate change goals.
That’s in a state with about 6.5 million licensed drivers and where new clean car regulations will be phased in starting toward the end of 2026.
“Overall, I think the biggest challenge for EVs will soon no longer be pricing — cheaper models are expected on the market in the next year or two and the Inflation Reduction Act subsidies also help lower costs,” said Aniruddh Mohan, a distinguished postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University’s Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment.
“Instead,” he added, “the biggest hindrance is lack of charging infrastructure, particularly for those renting in multifamily homes.”
Where are people buying electric vehicles?
Somerset County had the highest ratio of EVs to people at nearly 29 EVs per 1,000 residents. Cumberland County was the lowest with just over 4 EVs per 1,000 people.
Some car dealers in New Jersey have been dubious of the state’s new clean cars goals, called “Advanced Clean Cars II” or “ACCII.” That’s because customers still find EV prices to be high, prefer plug-in hybrids instead of fully-electric and worry the number of chargers in the state is not enough, they contend.
To meet its goals, the U.S. Department of Energy outlined that New Jersey by the end of 2025 must also have in place 400 fast charging stations — much more practical for drivers looking for a substantial charge in 30 minutes or so.
State data shows New Jersey currently has fast chargers in about 230 locations. In Cape May County, there’s a charging port for every 12 electric vehicles registered in the county. Cumberland County only has 3 total chargers — one for every 207 EVs in the county.
“The push to deploy 500,000 EV chargers by (President Joe) Biden administration has also run into multiple barriers including permitting and grid connections so that hasn’t helped,” Mohan, at Princeton, said. “Unless we solve these issues, we can’t expect mass adoption of EVs and sales will plateau because we will run out of the EV enthusiasts who are early adopters.”
Some drivers — a Rutgers University poll recently found — don’t want to make the jump to electric and prefer to stick with gas-powered vehicles. The loss of an EV sales tax break over the next three years and a new EV registration fee are also bound to hurt sales, environmentalists and business groups have agreed.
The New Jersey Coalition of Automotive Retailers, or NJ CAR, has been among the organizations hoping New Jersey reverses course on the ACCII rule and allows the market to organically transition to more clean cars. The limited role of plug-in hybrids in the state’s regulations, crafted from California goals, is also concerning, representatives there say.
NJCAR President Jim Appleton on Friday called the latest figures of total EVs in the state “good news.” However, he said it also shows an “out-of-touch” car policy.
“Not to be the skunk at the garden party,” Appleton said, “but the California Air Resources Board rule required New Jersey new car dealers to sell more than 100,000 EVs last year alone, consumers bought less than half that amount.”
Pamela Frank is the chief executive officer of ChargEVC-NJ, a not-for-profit trade and research coalition made up of climate advocates, non-profits, utilities, electric vehicle companies and others.
Frank said a bevy of disinformation around electric cars and the fact many “early adopters” helped push early clean car sales both come to mind when thinking about how the EV market has evolved.
The latest numbers, her group noted, were encouraging particularly for the spike in light duty plug-in hybrid registrants.
“We’ve basically flushed through on the early adopters, and we’re in a different stage of market adoption,” Frank said in an interview, “… we’re going to be entering a period where (we’re going to see) some of the prices declining and some great competition. For the first time since I’ve started this work, we’re going to actually have a whole bunch of different makes and models at different prices.”
Customer choice — driven by declining battery costs and national shifts toward manufacturing more EVs — will only improve sales and benefit New Jerseyans’ health in the process, advocates implored.
“I think quite a lot of us are gonna be driving EVs,” Frank said. “I’m very bullish on this.”