Key Takeaways
- EV sales crossed a milestone. The Southeast surpassed 1 million cumulative EV sales in 2026, reaching 1,137,170 as of June 30, with new passenger EV sales up 25% year over year despite federal policy headwinds.
- Manufacturing and jobs dipped for the first time in seven years. The region still leads the nation with 40% of EV/battery manufacturing investment and 32% of jobs, but both metrics turned negative over the past 12 months amid market consolidation and policy uncertainty.
- Charging infrastructure kept expanding. Fast-charger deployment along highway corridors grew 28%, and the region added an average of 133 new public charging stations per month — outpacing national growth rates in both DCFC and Level 2 charging.
- Utility investment grew, but lags national averages. Investor-owned utilities in the region increased EV-related investment 14% year over year, yet all still trail the national per-customer investment average, signaling room for growth.
- Used EVs are picking up steam. As roughly 228,000 leases expired (with 1 million more expected in the next eighteen months), used EV sales grew 34%.
- Federal politics remains a wildcard. The rollback of Biden-era EV incentives is straining U.S. competitiveness against Chinese automakers globally, and state-level funding can’t offset the loss of federal support.
The domestic electric vehicle (EV) industry continues to recover from the political whiplash inflicted by the Trump Administration and Congress. Cutbacks and terminations of EV market incentives for consumers, manufacturers, and supply chain providers have achieved what they intended: slowing the transportation electrification momentum that was building rapidly under the pro-EV Biden Administration. Despite Washington putting its full political weight on the scales in favor of internal combustion engines, while oil companies earn record profits on the backs of Americans grappling with an energy affordability crisis, the EV transition is proving unstoppable, including here in the Southeast.
This year marks the release of the seventh annual Transportation Electrification in the Southeast Report, a partnership between the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE) and Atlas Public Policy. The report tracks trends across six market indicators—manufacturing investment, jobs, EV sales, charging station deployment, utility investments, and public funding—and examines the underlying market and policy forces driving the numbers. The report focuses on Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North and South Carolina, and Tennessee.
SACE will host a webinar on the report findings on Thursday, September 10, at 11 AM ET. RSVP for the webinar here.
The release of this year’s report coincides with mounting tensions between adversarial domestic policies and an ascending global EV market, high gas and diesel prices driving up costs at the pumps and on everything else Americans buy, and increasing consumer awareness that EVs are more affordable, better performing, and more convenient than gas vehicles; evidenced by expanding consumer interest in EVs and EV driver satisfaction reaching an all-time high.
Manufacturing and Jobs
The Southeast remains the leading region in EV, battery, and supply chain manufacturing investment and jobs, having claimed 40% of national investments and 32% of jobs. However, for the first time in the seven years SACE and Atlas have been reporting on the region’s EV market, both announced manufacturing investments and anticipated jobs dipped into negative growth over the past 12 months.
The impact of the dip in investments and job growth is being felt differently in each state depending on which manufacturers are continuing to move ahead aggressively and which elements of the EV ecosystem each state provides.
The downturn in investments and jobs stems from two forces. The EV market is nascent and has grown quickly over the past decade. As with any rapidly expanding new market, it is not unexpected for investment and job growth to soften as competition drives out some businesses, while others consolidate to reduce costs and gain market share. However, the EV market also faces significant political uncertainty as policies shift dramatically from administration to administration, including the federal government stalling or canceling promised programs and incentives the industry had assumed were secure.
Read the report and state + regional one-pagers to go deeper
EV Sales
EV sales in the Southeast crossed a milestone in 2026, surpassing 1 million EVs and reaching 1,137,170 cumulative sales as of June 30. Despite political and policy headwinds, regional new passenger EV sales grew 25% from July 2025 through June 2026. Meanwhile, the burgeoning Southeast commercial fleet EV market dipped 28% as manufacturers continue working to bring price-competitive medium- and heavy-duty EVs to market.
Passenger EV sales and market share continue to vary state by state, with Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina leading the pack and Tennessee, South Carolina, and Alabama lagging.
The report examines notable forces that shaped the regional EV market over the past 12 months:
- New EV sales stagnated in Q4 2025 and into Q1 2026, in part because the expiration of federal tax credits for new and used EVs in September 2025 prompted consumers to buy a record number of EVs in Q3 2025, pulling sales forward and reducing future demand.
- Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz in response to U.S. and Israeli attacks in February 2026 contributed to a sharp increase in oil prices, which has hit consumers hard at the pump and increased their interest in EVs.
- EV leasing boomed over the past five years and, as an estimated 228,000 leases have ended, with another 1 million expected over the next eighteen months, is fueling a used EV market; used EV sales in the Southeast grew 34% over the past twelve months.
Read the report and state + regional one-pagers to go deeper
Charging Infrastructure
Charging infrastructure deployment growth remains strong, especially for direct current fast chargers (DCFC) installed along highway corridors to support long-distance EV travel, which increased 28% over the past 12 months. Still, Florida is the only state that exceeds the national average in DCFC per 1,000 people, though Georgia is close.
EV charging growth results from coordination among public agencies, utilities, charging providers, fleets, automakers, and other private-sector stakeholders to build reliable, convenient charging infrastructure. The Southeast added an average of nearly 133 public charging stations per month over the past year, including both DCFC and slower public Level 2 chargers. On the Level 2 front, regional growth was 12%, led by Alabama and Georgia. The region’s growth rates in both Level 2 and DCFC exceeded national averages.
Read the report and state + regional one-pagers to go deeper
Utility Investment
As EV politics grow more impactful and federal support becomes less reliable, utilities remain a critical market enabler; after all, they provide 100% of the energy that fuels the EV transition. The past few years have seen a steady shift from utilities investing in hardware — installing, owning, and operating EV chargers — to investing in market-enabling programs such as make-ready programs that reduce the cost of connecting EV chargers to the grid, managed charging programs that reduce the cost to fuel EVs during times of the day when there is excess grid capacity, demand charge limiters that reduce the negative cost impacts of demand charges on charging station owners, and vehicle-to-grid pilots that test the potential of EVs to serve as energy storage assets that can feed energy from batteries back to the grid to help solve peak demand resilience, and storm outage challenges.
Though investor-owned utility (IOU) investments grew 14% over the past 12 months, all of the region’s IOUs trail the national average in investments per customer, with some like Tampa Electric and Duke Energy North and South Carolina extremely far behind. The investment-per-customer metric reveals significant investment headroom across the region that, if utilities meet it aggressively and strategically, will help blunt federal political uncertainty and support long-term growth in passenger and commercial fleet EV adoption across light, medium, and heavy-duty vehicle sectors. Utilities and the region’s regulators should treat EV investments as a top priority because growth across EV sectors will bring new revenue into the electric utility system, which, if planned for and managed well, promises to put downward pressure on utility rates for all ratepayers at a time of increasing energy affordability concerns.
Read the report and state + regional one-pagers to go deeper
Public Funding
Government support for EVs has become a wildcard, and the resulting uncertainty a primary barrier to electrifying the nation’s and the Southeast’s consumer and commercial fleets. Along with slowing down the EV market, the uncertainty is creating risk that US automakers will be unable to compete in the global market longterm, a market that in 2025 saw EVs represent one in four new cars sold globally, and is on track to reach one in three in 2026. Chinese automakers, backed by stable, reliable government support, are dominating the global transition to EVs and outcompeting American companies, including Tesla, on price and performance.
By canceling and pausing EV incentives and programs established during the Biden Administration, the Trump Administration is creating domestic conditions that hurt American manufacturers and workers, favor Chinese manufacturers and workers, and put America’s century-long global automotive leadership at risk. States can’t make up for the rescinding of federal support, as evidenced in the Southeast, where state public funding for EVs has been a fraction of what the federal government has historically provided.
Read the report and state + regional one-pagers to go deeper
Looking Ahead
The 2026 Transportation Electrification in the Southeast Report includes more information on all the key market indicators discussed above, along with a deeper dive into the regional EV policy landscape. Additionally, SACE and Atlas have published state two-pagers that offer a snapshot of each of the six states covered.
Looking ahead, as near-term EV politics are expected to remain contentious, sustained regional market growth will increasingly depend on the actions of states, utilities, manufacturers, charging providers, fleets, and consumers, who continue to show desire for and satisfaction with EVs. Meanwhile, the global EV market is expected to continue its rapid growth, and US automakers’ ability to remain competitive will depend largely on long-term stable federal policy and investment signals.
While the Southeast’s EV market faces more uncertainty than in prior years, the strength of the region’s battery and EV manufacturing base, growing consumer EV market, and expanding charging infrastructure remain in place, positioning the region as a major contributor to the nation’s electric transportation future.
SACE will host a webinar on the report findings on Thursday, September 10, at 11 AM ET. RSVP for the webinar here.
