The California factor—or Tesla factor, or Musk factor It’s impossible to assess EV sales and not include a look at Tesla and its pronounced downward trend in sales. After many years of gains, Tesla sales and deliveries fell in 2024—both internationally and within the U.S. And Tesla’s California sales downturn was a key piece of that. Take Tesla out of the totals, and the California data tells a wildly different story. According to it, California sales of non-Tesla EVs rose 21% in 2024, versus 2023. So especially for California, 2024’s EV sales dip might have been a very Tesla-specific problem while EV shoppers flocked to other brands and models that weren’t In California, EV sales have amounted to about 30% of the sales total, according to the California New Car Dealers Association, and more than a third of all EVs sold in the U.S. are sold in the Golden State. Less than three years ago California comprised an eighth of Tesla’s global deliveries. While in 2022, Tesla cracked 10% of the market share in what used to be its home state, it’s now on a steep fall from favor—and considering how sharply sales of other EVs rose, it’s hard to point fingers to a sagging EV market. Tesla’s 2024 sales totals in California (based on registration data from Experian Automotive) dropped by 11.6% versus 2023, while its actual market share of the entire California light-vehicle market dropped from 13.0% in 2023 to 11.6% in 2024. The Toyota Camry edged out the Tesla Model 3 for the top-selling passenger car in California during 2023, while the Tesla Model Y held on to its spot as the top-selling light truck. Does Tesla's California burnout extend to other states? It appears so. Tesla sold 611,755 vehicles in the U.S. in 2024, down nearly 5% from the 2023 total of 642,504, according to Automotive News, based on registrations. So despite an expansion of the EV market across the U.S., Tesla’s EV sales are in contraction elsewhere too, and it didn’t manage to produce sales gains. Tesla CEO Elon Musk at Cybercab event (screenshot) - Oct. 2024 While there wasn’t significant EV sales growth in California in 2024, as J.D. Power pointed out there was indeed new growth in the EV sector coming from mass-market EV models, as well as in New York, Florida, and Colorado, which have emerged as new EV sales hotspots. To tease out the takeaway from another angle, Tesla isn’t making up for its California sunset in those new states. Its California sales drop of nearly 27,000 lands below its national-total sales drop of 31,000. As several polls and market analyses concluded in 2024, Tesla CEO Elon Musk was getting in the way of Tesla sales as he became overtly political and then a participant on the campaign trail—and now a “special government employee” in the executive branch and, some have called it, an unofficial member of President Trump’s cabinet. Based on those trends, and the quantitative trends emerging from sales data in 2024, it's hard to imagine J.D. Power's 3% EV market growth in 2025 happening through Tesla gains. As 2025 unfolds, it isn’t just Musk and his memes, but the policy he’s backing from the White House itself, that will affect how EV sales play out. Tags: