12 Bestselling Electric Vehicles of 2021

After almost a decade of hype, there are some signs that the electric-vehicle revolution is finally coming to pass. There were over 20 EVs for sale in the United States in 2021, plus many more hybrids and plug-in hybrids. Almost every concept that graces a showroom floor (or, lately, an overproduced livestream) has an electric angle. Automakers are promising to launch dozens of EVs over the next decade. Governors are promising to ban the sale of gas-powered vehicles. And improvements in charging infrastructure and battery technology mean that the vision of an electrified future is clearer than ever.

But there’s still one problem: In order for EVs to change the world, people are going to have to start driving them. To track the progress on that score, we created this list of the 12 bestselling EVs from the past year. Not all carmakers provide sales data for their EVs, especially in cases where the electric models share a nameplate with a gas or hybrid model. It’s possible that one or more of the vehicles in that category (which includes the BMW i3, the Kia Soul Electric, and the Polestar 2) would appear on this list if we knew the numbers, but our guess is that if the numbers were big we would hear about them.

*Sales figure based on Automotive News estimates and can vary based on vehicles’ registration data.

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