We’ve arrived at the tipping point where it’s probably easier to list the manufacturers that don’t make an electric car, rather than those that do. It’s amazing to consider that it was only 12 model years ago when you could first to purchase an electric vehicle (EV) from a mass-market automaker in the United States. And in the intervening years, at least three startup car manufacturers have emerged, one of which sells over 300,000 zero-emissions cars a year. That alone is incredible. 25 years ago, most experts in the industry would’ve told you that the introduction of an all-new independent auto manufacturer in the US market was all but impossible.
In that short span of time, the variety of electric vehicles offered has exploded. In 2011, you had one choice: an econobox focused on frugality. In the current model year, you have vehicles from at least four different classes, including strong representation from luxury cars and SUVs. The only thing missing at this point is a pure sports car, and that’s coming in the very near future.
This roundup of electric car companies is very much a moving target. Every few months, we’re expecting new EVs to emerge from traditional manufacturers, as well as upstarts in the automotive industry hoping to disrupt the status quo.
For now, we’ll keep this list to makers of passenger vehicles that anyone with cash or a decent credit score can purchase, either now or in the next year or two.
Who Makes Electric Cars?
- Audi
- BMW
- Cadillac
- Chevrolet
- Ford
- Genesis
- GMC
- Hyundai
- Jaguar
- Kia
- Lexus
- Lucid
- Mazda
- Mercedes-Benz
- MINI
- Nissan
- Polestar
- Porsche
- Rivian
- Subaru
- Tesla
- Toyota
- Volkswagen
- Volvo
Audi
In the 2010s, Audi wagered heavily on diesel technology, and we all know how that panned out. (More on that in the Volkswagen section below). Today, though, Audi is leading the charge for mid-luxury vehicles powered exclusively by electricity.
Audi puts all of its battery electric vehicles under the e-tron family name, which can be super confusing considering, until 2024, one of the models was just named “e-tron.” For a relatively small manufacturer, Audi has a surprising number fully electric models in the current model year, though some of those “models” are really just variations on a body style. Along with the Audi Q8 e-tron (formerly just named "e-tron"), Q8 e-tron S, Q8 e-tron Sportback, and Q8 e-tron S Sportback, Audi also offers the Q4 e-tron, Q4 Sportback e-tron, and the e-tron GT and e-tron RS, a pair of luxury sedans with an emphasis on performance.
BMW
It’s easy to forget how early BMW jumped into the EV marketplace. Offered between 2014 and 2021, the i3 was a tiny, B-segment supermini that looked, performed, and handled as if were no relation whatsoever to any other BMW available. The original i3 had a 60-Ah battery with an 81-mile range, which buyers could supplement with a gas-fired “range extender.” That car is gone now, but it was a rolling testbed for BMW, providing a lot of research and development for the automaker’s current and future lineup.
Current BMW EVs include the long-range i4, i7, and iX sedans and crossover. The i4 is presently available as the i4 edrive40 or i4 edrive M50, both of which are competitively priced with 5 Series internal combustion engine counterparts. The i7 is brand new and starts at almost $120,000, about $25k over the price of an ICE-powered 7 Series. The BMW iX Sports Activity Vehicle starts at $83,000, about $10,000 more than you’d spend for an X7.
Cadillac
GM is on target to offer 30 electric vehicles around the globe in the next five years. The Ultium battery powers the Cadillac Lyriq, which arrived for the 2023 model year. It shares the BEV3 platform and battery array used in the Hummer EV, but the Lyriq is much more of a luxury SUV than an off-roader.
Unlike other GM brands like Buick, Cadillac appears poised to deliver a full-on luxury sedan as well, in the form of the Celestiq, which is expected for the 2025 model year.
Chevrolet
If you consider the Chevrolet Volt as an EV, Chevy has been in the EV marketplace from the beginning of modern EV technology.
Like the i3 for BMW, the Volt provided Chevrolet with valuable knowledge about what worked and what didn’t for EV buyers. The phaseout of “range-extender” ICE generators should be indicative of how committed GM is to developing electric vehicles as a viable replacement for gas engines. The company currently offers the Chevrolet Bolt EV and the Chevrolet Bolt EUV, which conform to the kind of “economy car” form factor that early EVs like the Nissan Leaf did. However, the Bolt duo is headed for the chopping block and Chevrolet has begun taking reservations for the all-electric Silverado to be delivered as a 2023 model, potentially a game-changer that provides the utility of a pickup without the $120 fill-ups every 300 miles.
The horizon for Chevrolet’s EV lineup is exciting. In addition to the Silverado EV, we should expect an Equinox EV and a Blazer EV, too. Plus, there's the Corvette E-Ray, which will be the first truly “high-performance vehicle” in the EV landscape. And are you ready for an electric Corvette?
Ford
As early as 1903, Ford was experimenting with battery electric vehicles. It took a long hiatus until the 1950s, when it developed a sodium-sulfur battery that could store 15 times the electricity of a lead-acid battery. Ford presented an electric prototype in 1966. Then, in 1999, the company spent $23 million to purchase Think Global, a small automaker based in Norway that developed the Think City for sale in California, and it produced a Ranger EV pickup truck that ended up pretty much exclusively in government fleets. It also offered the Focus Electric beginning in 2011, along with a range of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs).
Now the Blue Oval has used those experiences to develop production vehicles like the Ford Mustang Mach-e and the Ford F-150 Lightning, a strategy that helps ease the introduction of EV propulsion by introducing it to existing nameplates. We said we weren’t going to cover commercial vehicles, but the Ford E-Transit van also has passenger potential, so we'll include it.
Genesis
Hyundai’s premium brand has been making a lot of waves recently with its beautifully futuristic exterior and interior styling. Until 2023, the Genesis lineup was powered exclusively by ICEs, but that changed with the all-new GV60, and it continues with electrified versions of the G80 and GV70. The former is built on the same underpinnings as the brilliant Hyundai Ioniq 5 and Kia EV6, but the latter two paint a more telling picture of Genesis’ future. The company’s decision to electrify its existing core models has us thinking that it’ll be an all-EV brand before too long.
GMC
Hummer used to be its own brand, but today, it’s a model under the GMC brand. If there was ever a vehicle that needed a credibility makeover, it’s Hummer, which was nearly synonymous with the gas-guzzling excess of the pre-economic meltdown era.
The GMC Hummer product line includes the Hummer EV Pickup—which is first out of the gate later this year—and the Hummer EV SUV, which is expected to arrive next year.
The exciting thing about the GMC Hummer EVs is the promise that they represent for off-road SUVs in the future. These aren’t just off-road vehicles with capability to match SUVs powered by internal combustion. These are vehicles that can do things better. Thanks to the lack of a transmission, transfer case, and differential, these EVs can pivot their wheels in all directions to provide superior maneuverability, and they also have ground clearance that no ICE-powered vehicle can currently deliver.
Hyundai
It appears that for the short term, Hyundai will brand all of its current and upcoming EVs with the Ioniq nameplate. We’ve driven the Ioniq 5, and if you haven’t seen the video review that Matt Smith conducted, you should. It’s a terrific vehicle with styling that grabs more attention than a Tesla at this point.
Hyundai also offers an Ioniq 6 and will soon offer a larger Ioniq 7 SUV, the latter arriving in the 2024 model year. The Ioniq 6 takes the Ioniq 5 recipe and adds a sleek fast-back sedan body in place of the 5's SUV shape.
Jaguar
It’s hard to figure out what’s going on at Jaguar. The company has seen sales growth in only six model years since 2005, and in 2021, it sold only 17,149 cars in the US. Porsche sells 70,000 vehicles a year now. Compared to that, Jaguar is barely in business.
Nevertheless, Jaguar was early into the luxury EV market with the i-Pace, which is a deceptively fast, hilariously fun-to-drive crossover. It’s never managed to sell a lot, peaking at 16,457 in 2020 worldwide, which is a shame, because it’s truly a wonderful vehicle. Jaguar says it plans to build nothing but EVs by 2025, but it almost simultaneously announced the scuttling of a planned all-electric XJ replacement, so who knows what to expect at this point?
Kia
Prior to the current crop of EVs with serious range, Kia built our favorite electric vehicle on an existing platform: The since-discontinued Kia Soul EV. It looked like any other Soul, modified with a funky “grille” since it no longer needed airflow through a radiator. But when you stepped on the accelerator, the Soul EV leapt out of the blocks as if a jockey had put the spurs to it.
That vehicle laid the groundwork for the current Kia EV6, which shares its platform with the Hyundai Ioniq 5. The EV6 feels like the sportier “touring car” to the Ioniq 5’s crossover SUV, and it really looks like the future. You could’ve seen this car in a film like Minority Report, and you would’ve thought its design was a little too far from reality at the time. Its geometric styling hides a generously scaled interior that is at once familiar (if you’ve ever been inside a Kia before) and a preview of what we might expect a conventional car to look like in the near future.
Lexus
Lexus has one fully battery-electric vehicle on sale today. The Lexus RZ is a small crossover with standard all-wheel drive, a 220-mile driving range, and an optional yoke-style steering wheel. That last detail certainly sets the RZ apart from the crowd, although it shares many of its underpinnings with the Toyota Bz4X and the Subaru Solterra.
Lucid
Lucid delivered its first cars to a group of 20 reservation holders in October of 2021. The company started life as battery manufacturer Atieva, which was in the business of providing battery and battery electric vehicle (BEV) platforms to other manufacturers. But the money isn’t in being a supplier, it’s in building your own car.
The fledgling automaker is currently taking reservations for the $87,400 Lucid Air, built in its all-new facility in Newark, California. With up to 1,111 horsepower, the Lucid Air is a beast specifically aiming to take on Tesla. The company is expected to deliver the Lucid Project Gravity SUV at some point in 2023.
Mazda
Mazda is—comparatively speaking—a tiny manufacturer. When all of the other manufacturers were delivering hybrids, Mazda never did, because it just didn’t have the R&D facilities of a company like Toyota or Honda.
It’s sort of the same situation now with EV production. Mazda introduced its first EV, the MX-30, for the 2022 model year, and we had that Robin Williams moment from Jumanji when it did: What year is it, if a manufacturer introduces an electric vehicle with a range limited to 100 miles? Mazda does plan to offer its EV crossover with a range extender, but it’s powered by a Wankel rotary engine, which has never in its history been particularly fuel-efficient or reliable.
Mercedes-Benz
The tri-star has an entire slate of electric vehicles entering the market, all carrying the “EQ” prefix in the model name.
The EQS is essentially an S-Class with an EV powertrain. The EQB is billed as an “all-terrain, all-electric SUV with optional seating for seven.” The EQE isn’t an E-Class exactly, but rather a “mid-size sedan with E-Class lineage.” Perhaps most exciting is the EQG expected in 2024. The “G” hints that it may be an electric version of a G-Wagen, which has all kinds of potential.
MINI
BMW’s entry-level brand has offered a Mini Cooper SE for quite a while now, but is saddled with a maximum range of 110 miles, making it non-competitive among the current class of EVs. We’ve heard talk of electrified versions of the Countryman and a new small crossover, but no dates have been attached thus far.
Nissan
Nissan is the grand dame of major market EV production. Before Tesla, before Hyundai, before General Motors, Nissan introduced the Leaf, and it demonstrated the potential of what an EV could be. A recent J.D. Power survey suggested that people who had vague interest in EVs suddenly experienced a 33 percent leap in their interest level by just getting a ride in the passenger seat of an EV. That was our experience with the Leaf when we first drove it: In an instant, it showed how great the experience of owning an EV could be.
Sadly, it took Nissan quite a while to capitalize on its early entry into the marketplace; the company has sat rather idly by as most other manufacturers have developed EVs on more mainstream platforms that the econobox Leaf. The Nissan Ariya—which arrived for the 2023 model year—is set to correct that and compete directly against the Mustang Mach-E and the Tesla Model Y. Nissan also says it’s developing eight global EVs by 2023, but there’s little word on which—if any—of those we’ll see here.
Polestar
Polestar is weird. It’s owned by Geely, which also owns Volvo. Volvo makes EVs that aren’t Polestars. Polestar makes EVs that look like Volvos. You figure it out.
At the moment, Polestar offers the Polestar 2, sort of a Mustang Mach-E-esque hatchback. We had a relatively positive experience when we tested a 2022 Polestar 2, and we've heard positive things from Polestar 2 owners, though some have mentioned fairly significant range reduction with winter tires in cold temperatures. In the coming year, look for the Polestar 3, which is based on its Precept concept car.
Porsche
There was a time when nobody thought anyone would ever buy an SUV with a Porsche shield on the hood. That was 100 percent incorrect. Anyone who tells you that people won’t buy a Porsche powered by electricity is going to be just as wrong.
Both of the vehicles you can buy now and in the very near future—the Porsche Taycan and the upcoming Macan EV—are going to find buyers who have been loyal to the brand, or are waiting for just this opportunity. Will Porsche offer a true EV sports car? We wouldn’t bet against it, but there’s no word at the moment.
Rivian
The Rivian story is kind of parallel to Lucid. It’s been a long road to get these vehicles produced, and there’s been no shortage of enthusiasm for their arrival. Rivian delivered the R1T pickup truck to a customer in September of 2021, and deliveries resumed to reservation holders soon afterward, in October of that year. R1Ts are great-looking trucks that look bigger in photos than it actually is. Think more along the size of a Ford Ranger than an F-150, which should indicate why Ford and Chevrolet opted to electrify their full-size trucks before messing around with something smaller.
The Rivian R1S SUV is next up, and we should see them starting to trickle out onto public roads in 2023.
Subaru
It’s sort of sad that the Subaru Crosstrek PHEV was never rolled out across the country. Nevertheless, it provided Subaru with a small base of knowledge about what its customers—who tend to prioritize all-wheel drive, performance, and support for an outdoorsy lifestyle—seem to want in an electric vehicle.
Subaru partnered with Toyota to create the Solterra, which is similar in almost all respects to the Toyota bZ4x crossover. We actually got to experience the Solterra off-road and it’s shockingly (pardon the pun) competent in rugged terrain. You wouldn’t want to cross the Rubicon with it, but it certainly held its own in rough trails on Catalina Island.
Tesla
Tesla is the 800-pound gorilla in the room, responsible not only for reshaping the idea of what an EV could be, but also for radically transforming how they are sold. It’s incredible to realize that Tesla had delivered nothing other than a converted Lotus Elise prior to 2014, and yet the company now reliably sells 300,000 cars a year.
Those cars currently in production are the Tesla Model 3, the Model Y, the Model S, and the Model X. The Cybertruck was supposed to be here in 2021, but, in typical Tesla fashion, production delays pushed its delivery well past its original date.
Toyota
As we mentioned with Lexus, Toyota purposely dragged its feet in EV production. It has been offering the Mirai hydrogen fuel cell vehicle, but only in California, since hydrogen elsewhere is still a pipe dream. If infrastructure is what’s keeping EVs from showing up in more driveways across America, hydrogen has no hope in the next 25 years.
In 2022, Toyota debuted the bZ4x, an all-wheel-drive crossover with a 230-mile range. It’s a good-looking crossover that really works to normalize what an EV can be.
Volkswagen
As we hinted in the Audi section above, “Dieselgate” completely tarnished the VW brand, but it seems to have come back with a new commitment to delivering clean vehicles. Volkswagen invested a billion Euros in converting its Emden plant to produce 1.2 million EVs a year, and the company is also building a $2.2 billion Trinity EV plant near its sprawling Wolfsburg facility.
Currently, the brand offers the ID.3, but not here in the United States. We’ve been seeing plenty of ID.4 SUVs on the streets, though. We’re also interested in the ID.Buzz, the long, long, long-awaited successor to the VW microbus that VW has been hinting at for nearly a quarter of a century. It’s supposed to be coming in 2024, as long as Lucy doesn’t pull the football away. VW has also shown its ID.Space Vizzion concept since 2019, but with no solid plans for production yet.
Volvo
Volvo proper—as opposed to the Polestar brand produced by the same parent—has an electrified version of the Volvo XC40 available right now. Called the XC40 Recharge, it’s good for 208 miles of range. You can also buy a C40 Recharge, which is akin to the Sportback sloped roof crossovers from Audi.
EVs to Look Forward To
There are also a good number of manufacturers who don’t currently have an EV in production, but are likely to produce one in the near future:
Honda
Unfortunately for those of us in the United States, Honda apparently has no plans to offer its delightful throwback Honda E in American showrooms. It’s futuristic, yet it retains a lot of the looks of the original Honda CVCC, which introduced quality and durability along with economy to the US market. Honda does, however, have plans to offer a crossover built in cooperation with General Motors. Coming in 2024, the Honda Prologue will be a two-row, midsize crossover SUV, and it should put Honda firmly on the map in terms of electric vehicle manufacturing.
Potential Industry-Shifters... or Vaporware?
Ultra-expensive one-off manufacturers like Aspark, which offers a $3 million vehicle of which about 10 will be extant in the United States, is one of those companies that could be a real player in a few years—or it could cease to exist. Fisker falls into this category, too, since its current reservations are all fleet-based.
There are other not-quite-ready-for-primetime vehicles from manufacturers like Bollinger and Canoo, and we’ll be keeping an eye on those as news breaks. Similarly, Faraday took preorders in early 2022, but the company is currently under subpoena by the SEC and a preliminary request for information by the DOJ.
Manufacturers like Byton—which was founded by former execs from BMW and Nissan—also have vehicles in the pipeline, but they don’t seem to be quite ready for the US marketplace and all the hurdles it puts in the way of US availability.
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