DENVER – Electric vehicles are becoming increasingly common on Colorado roads but some parts of the state are adopting the technology faster than others.
According to a report from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, there were about 8,600 light-duty plug-in electric vehicles in Colorado as of the end of 2016 and 1,600 of those were in Boulder County. Denver and Jefferson counties had the second-largest share at 1,100 each.
Here’s how the other counties stack up:
- Boulder: 1,600
- Denver: 1,100
- Jefferson: 1,100
- Arapahoe: 1,000
- Douglas: 800
- Larimer: 700
- El Paso: 700
- Adams: 500
- Weld: 300
- Broomfield: 200
The map below shows how electric vehicles are distributed around the Denver metro area by zip code:
Image: National Renewable Energy Laboratory
NREL also found that the three most popular plug-in electric car models – the Nissan Leaf (31 percent), Chevrolet Volt (25 percent) and Tesla Model S (15 percent) account for 71 percent of all plug-in vehicles in Colorado.
The report was a joint effort between NREL, the Regional Air Quality Council and the Colorado Department of Transportation in order to understand the demand and future needs for electric vehicle infrastructure.