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US electric car registrations doubled between 2017 and 2018

Most of the registrations were from California, though.

More and more Americans are warming up to the idea of driving an electric vehicle. According to tech analyst IHS Markit, 208,000 EVs were registered in the US in 2018 -- that's more than double the 100,000 cars registered the year before. As you might have guessed though, most of those vehicles were registered in California and the nine other states that adopted its Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) program. In fact, California serves as home to 46 percent of the total, or over 95,000 EVs.

In addition to the higher number of registrations, there's also a growing number of consumers showing loyalty to zero-emission vehicles. IHS says almost 55 percent of all new EV owners purchased or leased another EV again in the fourth quarter of 2018, up from 42 percent the quarter before that. While the holidays might have helped boost that percentage in the fourth quarter, the upward trend continued until January -- nearly 70 percent of EV owners returned for a new vehicle that month.

Tom Libby, loyalty principal at IHS Markit, explained:

"EV loyalty rates have been steadily increasing since their introduction by OEMs. This increase over such a short timeframe demonstrates that a portion of the US market is highly accepting of this new technology and has a growing comfort level with it. As more new models enter the market, we anticipate an even further increase in loyalty to these vehicles."

While 208,000 is still a tiny number if you take all vehicles sold into account, IHS expects to see more EVs on the road these coming years as manufacturers develop and release a wider variety of models to choose from. Some may even end up more popular than Tesla's Model 3, which is the best-selling EV today. The analyst believes that number will grow to 350,000 by 2020 and to 1.1 million by 2025.