With gas prices climbing, how EV friendly is Los Angeles?
In Los Angeles right now, you don’t have to drive far to find a place selling gas for more than $7 a gallon. (The countywide average is $6.20.) As recently as January, the average per-gallon price in the county was $4.03.
A decade ago, driving an electric vehicle often meant white-knuckling it until you could find the nearest charger. The range back then was often less than 100 miles on a charge. EVs sold today routinely can go more than 300 miles percharge. Meanwhile, the number of chargers has also proliferated.
That greater convenience, coupled with a more than 50% jump in prices at the pump, has re-energized EV sales. Alison Carr is a principal at Drive Wise, which finds available cars for new buyers. When the Trump administration allowed federal subsidies on EV purchases to expire last October, sales took a hit. “Definitely, the EV market has kicked back in,” she said. Things began to move when gas hit $4.50 and sales have accelerated as prices continued to climb. “I don’t see them going back down anytime soon,” she said.
Crosstown assembled a series of charts on what it means to drive an EV in Los Angeles and in major counties across the state.
While Los Angeles County has far and away the most ZEVs on the road, it does not have the highest percentage of ZEVs per resident. That title belongs to Silicon Valley, where Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, respectively, took the top two spots.
Those two counties also had the highest percentage of ZEVs compared to overall vehicle purchases last year, with almost one in three new vehicles in Santa Clara County last year being a zero-emission model.
According to the site Recharged, traveling 10 miles in an EV costs about 75 cents in electricity at Los Angeles rates. Traveling the same distance in a gas-powered vehicle that gets 30 miles per gallon costs about $2.07 at current Los Angeles prices.
Finding a nearby charger is often the biggest hassle for EV owners. However, since 2020, the city of Los Angeles alone has issued more than 12,000 permits for EV chargers. And for some commercial spaces, a single permit can result in multiple charging ports.
Los Angeles County has far and away the largest public charging infrastructure of anywhere in California. But it also has the most EVs. Public chargers are ones that can be accessed by any driver.
The California Energy Commission estimates that sales of ZEVs will top 254,000 this year. That’s far below the 408,731 ZEVs purchased in the state in 2025. That’s because sales slumped early in the year, as federal subsidies disappeared. But the state’s projection does not include the impact of recent fuel-price hikes, which appear to be boosting sales boosting sales across the county.
How we did it: We examined data from the California Energy Commission on ZEV sales and public charger infrastructure, as well as electrical permit data in Los Angeles.
Have questions about our data? Write to us at askus@xtown.la
