. . . Of the 13,772 cars with plugs sold last month, 7,161 went to buyers in California. That's exactly 52 percent, or more than the entire rest of the U.S. combined. Of the 467,000 electric cars sold since December 2010, Californians accounted for 216,000 of them—or 46 percent. . . .
Buyer preferences for SUVs and crossover utility vehicles, which are a minority of the high-volume plug-in vehicles available, have combined with cheap gasoline to keep sales lower than many advocates expected after fast growth in 2012 and 2013. It's notable that in the first six months of this year, BMW sold almost as many of its X5 xDrive 40e plug-in hybrid SUV—2,577—as it did of its pioneering i3 battery-electric car (2,880).
That's despite the plug-in hybrid X5 having an electric range of just 14 miles against the i3's 81 miles (soon to rise to 114 with a new battery pack for 2017). Plug-in hybrid SUVs are also offered by Mercedes-Benz and Volvo, with the latter's XC90 T8 version doing well too. . . .
