ICE vehicle sales dropped 28% from 2017 peak, while EV sales soared 648% over same period.
By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.
Tesla, California’s native son that once walked on water, and the only major automaker that manufactures in California, lost market share for the second year in a row in 2025 in California, but its Model Y was still the #1 bestselling model, with a share of 6.1% of all new vehicles sold, outselling by a huge margin the #2 bestseller, the Toyota RAV4 (share of 3.6%), according to registrations data released by the California New Car Dealer Association (CNCDA).
The pecking order of the top 6 bestsellers remained unchanged from last year. But further down the list, there was some elbowing for position: The national #1 bestseller, the Ford F-series pickup moved up two notches to #7 in California, pushing down the Toyota Corolla and the Chevrolet Silverado, each one notch. Thereby, the Silverado, national #2 bestseller, landed in the #9 slot in California.
The red bars are battery electric vehicles (EVs). The blue bars are ICE vehicles, including hybrids (if it has an ICE under the hood and the driver fills it up with gas, it’s an ICE vehicle, even if it has some electric components in its powertrain).
The most popular brand in California, Toyota, increased its share to 17.8%. Honda leapfrogged Tesla and reclaimed its classic hold on the #2 spot with a share of 10.8%.
Tesla lost lots of ground. Its share dropped to 9.9% of total new vehicle sales in 2025, from 11.6% in 2024 and from 13.0% in 2023. It had been #2 in those two years. In 2023, it was only 2.7 percentage points behind Toyota; now it is 7.9 percentage points behind.
California accounted for 11% of Tesla’s global sales.
But Tesla is still the #1 US brand on this list, ahead of Ford (7.7%) and Chevrolet (6.3%).
Overall vehicle sales in California (yellow in the chart below) rose by 3.3% in 2025 to 1.806 million vehicles, but where down by 11% from the peak in 2017.
ICE vehicle sales rose by 4.8% to 1.429 million vehicles in 2025, but where down by 28% from 2017.
EV sales dipped by 1.9% in 2025, but were up by 648% from 2017. And non-Tesla EV sales jumped in 2025:
- Non-Tesla EV sales: +8.7% to a record 198,560 vehicles.
- Tesla sales: -11.4% in 2025, and -22% over the past two years, to 179,656 vehicles.
- Cybertruck sales: -18% to 7,321 trucks, accounting for only 4.1% of Tesla’s total sales in California.
Quarterly EV sales were quite a spectacle. The federal EV incentives expired on September 30, which had triggered massive frontrunning by EV buyers, and sales exploded to a record 47,040 vehicles in Q3.
But then in Q4, the hangover set in, and EV sales replunged to 86,092, a hair below the sales volume in Q2.
The spike in Q3 was driven by record sales of non-Tesla EVs. Tesla’s sales also increased in Q3 but remained well below its Q3 sales in 2023 and 2024.
But then in Q4, non-Tesla EV sales plunged more than Tesla EV sales, and for the first time since Q3 2024, Tesla sold more EVs in California than all other EV makers combined.
The annual share of EV sales fell to 20.9% of total sales, including fleet sales, in 2025 from the record share of 22.0% in 2024, as California’s native son that still totally dominates the industry, ran into rough waters.
In terms of retail sales (excluding fleet), the share of EV sales in Northern California was 24.6%; and in Southern California 21.8%, according to the CNCDA registrations data.
And in case you missed it: Ugly Charts of US Auto Sales, 2025: Stellantis, Nissan Flirt with Catastrophe. GM, Ford, Honda Sales Rise but far below Peaks. Toyota & Hyundai-Kia Set Records
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Nice data compilation. Thanks!
CA energy dept stats show a bit over 16% of all ZEV sales are PHEV (plug in hybrid).
Never understood why those had/have such a low take rate. They tend to be very reliable if Stellantis is avoided
That’s nonsense.
1. PHEVs are not ZEV (they have an ICE under the hood, duh)
2. The share of PHEVs has been flat at around 3-4% of total registrations since 2016. They’re just not a factor.
It’s not nonsense. It’s the data from CA energy board that groups phev with bev’s for zev sales counts (the do segregate them out)
2. Yes I agree they are not a big segment. That will change with California allowing them to meet their ZEV goals per ACC2 act and growing consumer acknowledgment/press that you can do 80+% of mile EV without roadtrip issues
Buying a car used to be fun and exciting, especially here in California, but with what’s available today I wouldn’t even want to go to a show or showroom to even look at cars as there is simply nothing of interest to see even if any choice was completely free.
Can’t beat a Toyota!
Great Vehicles!
Still have my 2007 Toyota Tacoma. I aim to drive it till it falls apart.
Wolf here is helping me keep tabs on the EV market status. I like a lot about EVs, but the features vs cost aren’t quite there yet for my use case (I live a ways out of town). Hopefully the right car for me will come off the production line BEFORE my truck falls to bits!
Rivian stock (RIVN) getting hammered of late. Great short-term trading “stock” due to its volatility. Very low PE: ZERO. Actually, negative but I digress. Mired in a years-long trading range. Looking to go long on one of two signals: 1. An overnight gap down, but preferably, 2. A beautiful big red daily candle with very little wick at either end of the body and closing damn near on the low, accompanied by significantly higher volume. I’ll buy on the close. Don’t do this at home unless you’re paper trading and keeping in mind that paper trading will never simulate trading with real money because your broker-DEALER never takes the other side of your paper trade.
“Tesla, California’s native son that once walked on water, and the only major automaker that manufactures in California.” I’d wager a week of roustabout wages that Tesla uses a massive amount of foreign parts and electronics in their apparatuses. 50 + percent? Who knows? Maybe they should be labeled ‘Assembled in the USA’. Mostly by robots, likely.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (nhtsa.gov) tracks the percentage of US/Canadian content in motor vehicles.
Teslas are at the top:
Model RWD, AWD: 75%
Model Y: 70%
Cybertruck: 65%
Some other foreign brands, such as Honda and Toyota, that assemble their vehicles in the US, also have many of their models in the 60-75% range.
The US brands have a few models in the 50-70% range and a whole bunch of models in the 20-30% range. And a whole bunch in the near 0% range, such as GM’s China-made Buicks.
There are 9 pages of small-print tables of models where you can look that up, by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/2025-10/MY2026-AALA-Alphabetical-10-8-25.pdf
Till Oct 2025, Tesla and few other EVs were subsidized ($7.5k to $10K).
Elon managed to get a loophole for few weeks where Delivery could happen in 2025 as long as Order was placed prior to Sep 30 2025.
Now Federal credits are gone. CA is still offering EV credit but not on mass scale like before. very targeted cases.
So I believe 2026 will be completely different story.
Perhaps people are finding out that older, 2nd hand Teslas and particularly non-Teslas have a neglible trade-in value. This has a huge influence on the price of a car and always has to be reckoned in. A 100 000 dollar Porsche EV is worth perhaps 15-20000 after 5 years, a Toyota Land Cruiser will be worth 80 000 if you find the right buyer. So the Porsche cost 180 000, the Toyota 120 000.