Currently Available Electric Cars

This is a list of currently available electric cars that you can buy right now in the U.S. For the purpose of this list, a plug-in battery electric or a plug-in hybrid is considered an electric car, because you will be plugging it into an outlet in your garage to charge the batteries at night.

A plug-in battery electric relies solely on batteries to power the car, also known as a Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV). This type of vehicle uses no gasoline!
A plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) uses batteries and a backup engine that uses gasoline or diesel.

We covered these two types in our post Plug-In Car.

This list is a work in progress and will be updated when a new BEV or PHEV has been released. An electric car has to be available for purchase to the general public, out of testing, and delivered to those who pre-ordered the car to be on this list (Mapawatt Note: we've decided to go a little lax on this requirement. The cars have to at least have an announced release date within a few months). We're also only focusing on vehicles that are marketed to the general public for use on all road types (city and highway). To see a list of upcoming electric vehicles, concepts, and their release dates, check out the list at Plug In America. This list only includes cars available for purchase in the United States.

Currently Available Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV)

BMW ActiveE (for lease in early 2012)
Ford Focus Electric (Mid 2012 in Arizona, Colorado, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, North Carolina, Oregon, Texas, Virginia and Washington.)
Mitsubishi i
Nissan Leaf
Tesla Roadster
Wheego Whip LiFe

Currently Available Plug-In Hybrid (PHEV)

Chevrolet Volt
Fisker Karma
Toyota Prius Plug-In (March 2012 in Arizona, California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and Washington)

As you can see, the list is short. Let's hope this is inspiration for automakers of electric vehicles! Let us know if you have an update for the list or you have an electric vehicle and you'd like to share your experience.

***Update - 2/24/11: we have a new post up titled "Plug-in vehicle and EV charging station trackers" that gives you a bunch of more useful information on this topic!

Tags:

available electric car

available plug-in hybrid

Plug In America

Category:

Plug-in Electric

Plug-in Hybrid

Transportation

Comments

Anonymous (not verified) Sat, 02/12/2011 - 20:02

Consider adding electric motorcycles too perhaps?

ckmapawatt Sun, 02/13/2011 - 17:11

That's actually a good idea. I know the tool I mentioned here has a section for motorcycles: http://mapawatt.com/2011/02/12/plug-in-vehicle-and-ev-charging-station-trackers/

Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 03/15/2012 - 14:16

AMP should be on this list!

Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 07/22/2010 - 20:31

It is sad that the list is so short here in 2010. We should have been using electric cars for inter city use years ago. I've grown tired of all the hype from auto makers and their promised electric vehicles. Our highways should have already been filled with zero emission cars. I absolutely hate the oil industry and their loyal followers. Greedy monopolies are killing us all. I've pledged to never buy another new car that uses fossil fuel. That includes hybrids! In other words I'll continue to use my existing gas engine, or other used vehicle until I can get an all electric.

Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 06/21/2010 - 11:59

That's a depressingly short list! Would it be useful to add an "Expected soon" section where you list BEV and PHEV cars that have been announced together with their anticipated availability dates (with notations on whether the dates have been announced by the manufacturer, or are just speculation). That would be a useful resource for someone planning on buying soon. Off the top of my head the list should have: Chevy Volt, Nissan Leaf, Toyota Prius. All expected in 2011 models (or perhaps for sale in 2011)?

ckmapawatt Mon, 06/21/2010 - 13:03

Thanks Tony. Our <a href="http://mapawatt.com/2009/11/10/buy-plug-in/" rel="nofollow">earlier post on electric cars has some upcoming cars.</a> The problem is almost every manufacturer has a "planned" electric car on the books with expected release dates, but often manufacturers miss those. The link from Plug In America is probably the most exhaustive list out there. I want this list to be updated when a new car actually reaches the market and exists out of "test" stage.

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