As gas prices soar, Seattle solidifies its status as an EV capital
With regular gas currently hovering around $5.70 a gallon in the Seattle area, filling up the tank can be a source of dread. Owners of electric vehicles, I imagine, must be smiling to themselves as they drive past the gas station.
In the Seattle area, that's a fast-growing number of people, according to the latest market-research data from Nielsen. Between 2022 and 2025, the number of local households that owned or leased an EV more than doubled, growing from around 64,000 to 165,000.
Expressed as a percentage of the nearly 2.2 million households in our market, that's an increase from 2.9% in 2022 to 7.5% in 2025.
Seattle is well ahead of the national average in EV adoption. Across 83 U.S. market areas, the share of households that own or lease an EV grew from 1.3% to 4% during this period.
In 2025, Seattle ranked seventh for overall EV adoption among the 83 markets. The San Francisco area took the top spot at 11.2%, the only market in which more than 1 in 10 households owned an EV. Honolulu was No. 2 at 9.8%, followed by Orlando, Fla. (8.8%), San Diego (8.0%), Denver (7.9%), and Sacramento, Calif. (7.6%).
The cost of gasoline certainly plays a role in the decision to drive an EV, and five of the top seven EV markets are in one of the three states with the highest average gas prices: California, Hawaiʻi and Washington.
Generally, markets in the western and southern U.S. had higher rates of EV ownership than those in the Northeast and Midwest. For example, in the Boston area, 4.8% of households had an EV, 3.5% in the New York area, and just 2.7% in the Chicago market.
Nielsen surveyed about 103,000 adults across 83 U.S. markets between January and October 2025, including about 2,000 in the Seattle market. The Seattle market area includes most of the Puget Sound region.
While part of the appeal of EVs may be that they save on gas, the people who drive them probably don't have to worry too much about making ends meet. According to Nielsen, the median income for a household that owned or leased an EV in the Seattle market area was about $208,000 last year - that's more than double the median for all households, which was $89,000.
Generally, EVs have a higher sticker price than comparable gas-powered cars, which is probably one reason households with EVs tend to have higher incomes. However, federal tax credits and state rebates can narrow this price gap. Another factor in the higher incomes of EV households is that in many cases, an EV serves as a secondary car or a tech-forward addition rather than the primary vehicle.
Of course, you can't talk about electric vehicles in Seattle without talking about Tesla. They're popular here, and the data backs that up. In 2025, roughly 94,000 Seattle-area households had a Tesla - that's a remarkable 57% of all local EV households. Overall, Seattle ranks third nationally in Tesla ownership, at 4.3% of all households, trailing only Honolulu and Austin.
Tesla isn't just popular in Seattle; it's also been a lightning rod of controversy. This was especially true in the early part of 2025, when CEO Elon Musk's association with the Trump administration caused a backlash against the Tesla brand among some left-leaning people. There were protests at Tesla dealerships and numerous cases of vandalism in Seattle and many other cities.
It's worth noting that the most recent Nielsen survey captured the height of the Tesla backlash. Anecdotally, you certainly heard of some folks here in Seattle selling their Teslas and vowing not to buy the make again. But it's too soon for data to show whether the controversy significantly damaged the brand in Seattle in the long term.
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This story was originally published April 30, 2026 at 6:37 AM.