Southeast States Capture 40 Percent of Domestic EV Investments

Source :Transportation Electrification in the Southeast: 2023

Last week, my colleagues Tom Taylor, Matthew Vining, and I published the fourth annual “Transportation Electrification in the Southeast” report in partnership with the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE).

The report benchmarks transportation electrification progress in the Southeast (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, North and South Carolina) across six key metrics: manufacturing employment and investment, sales, charging deployment, utility investment, government funding, and public policy. The data in this report is pulled from Atlas EV Hub and is through June 2023. Below are eight key data points from the report.

1. New EV sales in the Southeast lag the national market share, though there is considerable range in the region. Georgia, Florida, and North Carolina each recorded an EV market share above 7 percent, while Alabama trailed all states in the region with a 2.5 percent market share.

2. Since July 2022, new light-duty EV sales in the Southeast grew 50 percent, representing nearly 470,000 sales in the region through June 2023.

3. The Southeast is a national leader in EV-related investment and jobs, capturing 40 percent of all announced manufacturing investments and 35 percent of all announced jobs through June 2023. Georgia has the most announced EV jobs in the country (27,817).  

4. Since July 2022, there has only one public utility commission approval for transportation electrification investment in the Southeast. In December 2022, Georgia Power’s three-year budget of $58.5 million was approved by the Georgia Public Service Commission, the utility’s largest EV investment to date.

5. Southeast investor-owned utilities trail the national per customer investment in EVs, and the region represents only 7 percent of all approved investments nationally despite making up 18 percent of the U.S. population.

6. Charging deployment in the Southeast has significantly ramped up. In the past 12 months, the region saw a 60 percent increase in EV chargers with 1,600 new DCFC ports. Tennessee saw the highest relative growth in fast chargers with an 85 percent increase from July 2022.

7. States in the Southeast trail the national average for public funding, and little state funding has been allocated towards EVs in the region. Southeast states have awarded or made available $228 million for transportation electrification through the VW Settlement program through June 2023, and continue to access funds for EVs from other federal programs such as the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) Program and the Clean School Bus program.

8. While some states have established pro-EV policies, such as North Carolina’s Executive Order 271 which initiates the Advanced Clean Trucks (ACT) rulemaking, others have passed legislation that may inhibit the uptake of EVs.

Read the full report here, and watch a recorded webinar featuring Tom Taylor and Stan Cross from SACE discussing the report.