Colorado EV market slows after record 2024 growth

Electric vehicle (EV) adoption in Colorado has hit a speed bump in 2025. The state led the nation in EV market share of new registrations in late 2024, but skidded to fourth in early 2025.

According to the EValuateCO online dashboard, the state has more than 183,000 EVs on the road, or 3.76 percent of all light-duty vehicles, as of early 2025. The total number of EV registrations fell from 22,500 in Q4 2024 to 15,184, a 32.5 percent drop. The EV market share also dropped, albeit not as precipitously, from 21.5 percent to 15.9 percent.

Will Toor, executive director of the Colorado Energy Office, says the recent slippage doesn’t overshadow the state’s successes. Case in point: In 2019, only 2.2 percent of new vehicles sold in Colorado were EVs. “We’ve seen more than a tenfold increase in EV adoption,” says Toor.

Regardless, the state will have trouble hitting its long-term goals if the trendline wobbles for long. “We have a target of nearly a million electric vehicles on the road by the end of the decade, and about 2 million EVs on the road by the middle of the following decade,” says Toor. “We think that we’re on a pretty good trajectory right now that aligns with where we need to be, but there are clearly some new headwinds on the federal side.”

The state helped boost EV adoption with investments in charging infrastructure and financial incentives in the form of tax credits. The maximum $5,000 credit dropped to $3,500 in 2025 and it will continue to gradually decline to zero in 2029. “The need for tax credits is a temporary need, and that’s why we’ve structured it to phase out over the next several years,” says Toor.

Daniel Wilkins, a policy analyst with Washington, D.C.-based Atlas Public Policy (the consultancy behind the EValuateCO dashboard), says Colorado’s aggressive incentives helped propel the state to national leadership. “It’s still in the top 10, and it has always been a leading state,” says Wilkins. “It actually overtook California in Q3 and Q4 [2024] for percentage of EVs that were sold.”

As of Q1 2025, the state’s drop to fourth still places it far above the national EV market share of 9.6 percent. “It’s tapering off quite considerably, going back to a baseline we saw in September 2024,” says Wilkins.

Colorado’s decline coincides with a national dip from about 12 percent EV market share in December 2024, he notes. “I can’t point to any one specific reason [for the dropoff], but I think that there is a high level of uncertainty in the economy.”

There’s another roadblock in the broader car market. “Early adopters have already purchased their EVs, so now we’re getting to the mainstream of Americans that need to purchase a new vehicle,” says Wilkins.

An EV owner himself, Toor thinks word of mouth will propel those buyers towards EVs. “Once you’ve driven an EV and seen the performance and acceleration, you don’t want to go back,” he says. “By my calculation, what I pay for electricity compared to driving a gas car is the equivalent of getting gas at about 90 cents a gallon.”

Wilkins says that Atlas’s research supports this across many makes and models. “After you get past the upfront cost to purchase an EV, time and time again, an EV compared to a gas counterpart actually does save you money over the life of the vehicle in terms of maintenance and operations,” he explains.

In Toor’s mind, continued innovation along with maturing economies of scale will keep catalyzing the EV market with better cars at lower prices. “We are now in a place where consumers really want these vehicles,” he says. “There are so many people out there who have them, who are talking to their neighbors and telling their friends about how much they like their new cars, that I think we are going to continue to see EV adoption in Colorado grow.”

That will not only improve air quality and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but also benefit the electrical grid at large. A Colorado Energy Office analysis found that every EV deployed in Colorado provided about $650 in benefits to utility customers due to downward pressure on electricity rates. “By having EVs charging overnight, you’re able to take all the fixed costs that are associated with that infrastructure and spread it over more kilowatt-hours,” says Toor.

The immediate challenges relate to federal policy, with a $7,500 tax credit on the chopping block in Washington, D.C., alongside investments in EV infrastructure. The state has a “strong set of programs” to support the expansion of charging stations, notes Toor, but funding has been impacted by the Trump administration. “The National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure fund was supposed to provide $57 million to Colorado for investment in high-speed charging along highway corridors, and the new administration has frozen the vast majority of those funds,” he explains. That matter is now in the courts, and Toor says he is optimistic the funding will ultimately be released to the state.

Toor also points to “the uncertainties around tariffs” as a drag on the market. “Electric vehicles have been getting more and more cost-competitive, and U.S. manufacturers have been becoming more and more important players in the EV market,” he explains. “One of our biggest concerns is that the Trump administration’s reckless tariffs could drive up the cost of electric vehicles right at the time when EVs are becoming cost-competitive.”

Regardless of politics, not everyone is bullish on the future of EVs in Colorado. Evan O’Meara, dealer principal at O’Meara Motors in Northglenn, says he expects the slowdown to continue.

The dealership network, which sells Ford, VW and GMC vehicles, first dipped a toe into EVs with the ill-fated Wheego brand about 15 years ago. That carmaker quickly failed, but O’Meara Motors has seen sales of both new and used EVs grow in recent years.

“Because of the huge rebates from the state and federal government, it makes the leases on EVs insanely attractive,” says O’Meara. “We sell enough. We sell a whole lot of used ones, because Colorado gives you a rebate on used EVs.”

However, O’Meara thinks the market may have plateaued as of 2025. “It does feel like it’s reaching a saturation point,” he says. “Electric has its place in the universe, but I don’t think this nonsense, where they think that we’re going to get to 50 percent EVs, that’s not going to occur.”

What’s behind the pessimism? “People don’t want them,” answers O’Meara. “Charging is a pain in the ass, they still have that range anxiety, they’re expensive. They’re really not very green at all. Our electrical infrastructure is in no way, shape, or form ready for that kind of juice pull, not the poles, not the lines themselves, not the actual power generation.”

In 2024, Buick announced a plan to go all-electric, and GM offered O’Meara a buyout of his network’s dealership. “We gave GM the keys back,” he says. “That’s how much I don’t believe in it.”

Adds O’Meara: “To be honest, I don’t care what people drive. I don’t have a dog in the fight. I really don’t. You want to drive an electric? You want to drive an ice cream truck or the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile? I don’t care what you drive. None of it matters to me. I just don’t see it for EVs.”

This article appeared in the Summer 2025 issue of ColoradoBiz under the headline, ‘EV Slowdown.’