While most Americans should be familiar with the Fords, the Hondas and the Toyotas of the automotive landscape, the advent of electric cars on a broad scale have introduced a number of all-new manufacturers, as well.
There’s still a lot of “brochureware” out there, in the form of electric vehicle (EV) concepts that never get past the PowerPoint stage. Bollinger was one of the companies that looked like it had some promise, but has never managed to get off the drawing board.
But there are legacy manufacturers, long-term upstarts and startups from the United States, Japan, Europe, and China that are doing incredible work in the EV space, reinventing not only the vehicles we drive, but also the way we buy them. Figuring out which companies are at the top of their game and which are barely able to move their pieces around the game board is the challenge.
Some of these EV companies are the brands you’ve been purchasing from for generations. Others have a good decade of experience under their belts. Still others are electric vehicle companies brand new to the scene but are on the verge of introducing world-beating products. Here’s the rundown of where they've been, what’s in the marketplace today, and what we can expect from automotive electrification in the very near future.
The Best Electric Car Companies
Ford Motor Company
Up until a certain point, there’s been Tesla and there’s been everyone else. But that tide is changing, thanks to both new products and new versions of legacy vehicles that have resonated with American consumers.
Talk to your average Baby Boomer and they’ll give you a 20-minute soliloquy on why the Mustang Mach-E isn’t a Mustang, but regardless, they are selling well in the second half of 2023 and are on track to do even better in 2024. The Mach-E is a compelling product, with good looks, great performance and the form factor that Americans seem to want to drive. Our bet is that in 2024, the Mach-E outsells the conventional Ford Mustang by a good margin.
The second prong in Ford’s approach is the Ford F-150 Lightning, which sold 15,617 last year, amid chip shortages, inflation and every other economic disaster the world could throw at it. The F-150 Lighting is – for the sake of argument – a conventional pickup truck, just powered by a battery and an electric motor, making it more palatable to people who might not normally consider an EV. Fleet customers and contractors can also take advantage of similar technology in the E-Transit cargo van.
In the future, look for more familiar products with electric drivetrains. Next up is reported to be the Explorer Electric, which Automotive News suggests is slated for 2025.
General Motors
There was a moment there when GM was at a distinct disadvantage because it had sold over the 200,000 cap that allowed consumers to take advantage of the full federal tax credit for buying an EV. But the Inflation Recovery Act signed into law in 2022 swept the cap off the table, and instead incentivized manufacturers to do what GM was already doing, namely to deliver cars with as much home-grown battery and motor components as possible.
GM has progressed through stages of EV development, appearing to learn every step of the way. The Chevrolet Volt (2011 to 2019) was an interim step that allowed GM to offer a plug-in electric vehicle with a range-anxiety-solving on-board generator. It picked up major awards while selling over 157,000 units in the United States alone. With the Cadillac ELR, GM took the same platform and built an attractive luxury car on top of it, but the car it was in was all wrong, a luxury coupe in an age when premium consumers were buying crossovers.
The future of GM EV production is on the verge of a dramatic shift. The Chevrolet Bolt and Bolt EUV have both sold well and offered Americans a bite at the EV apple for the lowest possible entry price. Despite record sales, production of both models ended in 2023. Fortunately, GM has all but confirmed that a new, Bolt will be introduced at a future date.
GMC delivered the Hummer EV in 2022, which is absurdly priced and sized, but also shows some of the promise of a powertrain that isn’t dependent on a driveshaft, putting motors at the wheels and allowing them to steer in multiple directions.
That vehicle is the basis for the Cadillac Lyriq, which began deliveries in 2023. Following that is a tsunami of product based on the same BEV3 platform, including the Buick Electra E5, Cadillac Celestiq, Chevrolet Blazer EV, Chevrolet Equinox EV, Chevrolet Silverado EV, and even two products from Honda and Acura.
Honda
2024 is the year for the all-new Honda Prologue, an electric SUV that is the initial product offering in a partnership with General Motors, running on the same BEV3 architecture as the upcoming GMC Hummer EV and Cadillac Lyriq. It has an 85-kWh battery, which offers an EPA estimated 300-mile range before charging. The same technology is also employed in the all-new 2024 Acura ZDX, although with a bigger battery (102-kWh) and more range (up to an estimated 325 miles).
According to information Honda unveiled in April of 2022, it plans 30 EVs for worldwide production before 2030. If its ambitions are correct, Honda says it will sell 2 million EVs out of Honda’s total 5-million vehicle production by that time.
Hyundai
Hyundai is quietly killing it in the electric vehicle space, making some of the best EVs on the market. The all-new Hyundai Kona Electric will get an EV version, and the Hyundai Ioniq line is filled with compelling vehicles: the Ioniq 5 and Ioniq 6 boast groundbreaking EV designs, and an Ioniq 7 may be on the way soon.
According to Hyundai, the Ioniq 5’s battery pack can maintain charging rates of more than 200kW from a 10 percent state of charge to about 55 percent, thanks to a new battery cooling system that places each battery in direct contact with a cooling plate. The car also features bi-directional charging, which allows it to power accessories like tools and laptops.
Hyundai’s luxury brand, Genesis, carries over three familiar EVs in its stable from 2023. The GV60 crossover, built on the same E-GMP platform as Hyundai’s Ioniq series, the Electrified GV70 SUV, and the Electrified G80, an electric version of its G80 luxury car, at a price that undercuts a lot of luxury EV brands by half.
And we’re bundling Kia with Hyundai here only because the brands share technologies. Kia got off to a great head start with the Soul EV, which was one of the most fun early EVs we drove, but has since been relegated away from the US market. Now it’s got its own design language with the EV6, which shares a platform with the Ioniq, and it also delivers the Niro EV in not only a pure electric platform, but in a plug-in hybrid and a conventional hybrid as well. All-new for 2024 is the 3-row, seven passenger EV9.
Lucid
Lucid goes far in the opposite direction from Rivian. It appears to want to capture the highest end of luxury EV shoppers from brands like BMW and Mercedes-Benz from vehicles like Mercedes’ new EQS sedan and SUV.
The Lucid Air offers a massive battery with the most impressive range of any EV currently available, with up to 516 miles of range. It also produces vehicles with sub-2-second 0-60 times. But it does so at a price. These vehicles theoretically start at $77,400, but can climb all the way to $249,000 should you opt for the high-performance Sapphire trim. Lucid’s second vehicle, the [Gravity] SUV is scheduled to make its full debut sometime in 2024.
Nissan
It’s easy to forget that the first mass-market EV sold by any manufacturer in the 21st century came from Nissan. The early Leaf was a relatively successful product, selling 150,000 units since its introduction, but it was also an example of miscalculation by major manufacturers about what Americans wanted out of an EV. Like all fuel-saving products that came before it, Nissan predicted that customers would want the smallest, least expensive, most economical package possible, rather than a full-blown luxury car with tons of power.
Nissan still offers the Leaf, now in its second generation. It’s a much more substantial car, and equipped with the optional 60-kWh battery, it’s capable of driving 212 miles on a charge.
In the 2022 calendar year, Nissan introduced the Ariya, which has a lot more potential to reach consumers where they are. The Ariya is a crossover SUV with up to 304 miles of range, but thanks to an 87-kWh battery pack, charging time is still lower than some of the massive batteries in vehicles like the Mercedes-Benz EQS.
Nissan has unveiled its “Ambition 2030” plan with four EV concepts called Chill-Out, Max-Out, Surf-Out and Hang-Out. You’re not alone if you think those names are meaningless, so we’ll describe them in terms that make sense. Chill-Out appears to be a compact crossover, Surf-Out is a compact pickup along the lines of a Ford Maverick or a Hyundai Santa Cruz, Hang-Out is a fun compact SUV similar to something like a Nissan Cube, and Max-Out is a full-on luxury sport convertible. Of the four, the Surf-Out and Hang-Out seem to have the highest likelihood of production.
Rivian
Rivian is one of the brands that felt like a pipe dream just a few years back. But, it’s managed to deliver its R1T pickup, to the point that it’s becoming a familiar sight on American highways. In 2023, the same became true of the R1S SUV based on the same platform.
What you’ll likely see a lot more of is a vehicle that isn’t available to you. The Amazon Custom EDV is suddenly delivering packages everywhere, and it makes its presence known as boldly as the headlamps in either the R1T or R1S.
Commercial vehicles tend not to make manufacturers a ton of money, but they’re a way to test the durability and longevity of a platform. It appears that this is Rivian’s strategy for the near future, banking on selling delivery vehicles in volume to test the technology it will continue to deliver in consumer products. Over the last few years, Rivian has seen outside investment from Amazon, Ford, and retail giant Cox Automotive in the billion-dollar range.
Stellantis
Stellantis brands haven’t exactly been known for environmental friendliness up to this point. This is the company that brought you a 707-hp supercharged V-8 in just about every product Dodge sells, along with the massive Ram 2500s and 3500s navigating America’s highways.
But the merger between Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and the French PSA Group made this the fifth largest automaker in the world, and as such, has forced the company to reckon with a global appetite for electric vehicles, rather than just a focus on niche American markets.
By 2030, according to Stellantis, 100 percent of its European sales and 50 percent of its American sales will be EVs. The brand plans to offer more than 75 battery electric vehicles by that time.
It has introduced four battery-electric vehicle platforms: the STLA Small, Medium and Large platforms are unibodies, while the SLTA Frame is a body-on-frame platform.
It’s the STLA Frame that ignited the first bit of news about Stellantis’s electric future. This is the underpinning of the Charger Daytona SRT concept, which Dodge plans to introduce as a production model in 2024. Ram then made news announcing the 2025 1500 REV full-size electric pickup truck.
Jeep has already made significant strides with its 4xe Wrangler and Grand Cherokee, and the company says that by 2025, Jeep will have four all-electric SUVs for sale.
Tesla
Tesla maintains its position as the number one EV manufacturer on the planet. And despite all the goofiness exhibited by Elon Musk lately, it still has managed to deliver a range of vehicles that has forced the legacy manufacturers to reevaluate their product line.
The challenge now is maintaining that lead into 2024 and beyond, and it’s going to be tough. While manufacturers like Ford and GM have diversified the product line with full-size pickups, wild off-road SUVs and entertaining crossovers, Tesla’s current product lineup—Model S, Model X, Model Y and Model 3—is the same as it has been for several years now. All that is about to change as the Cybertruck, that prospects put deposits on four years ago, is finally slated for deliveries in 2024.
Still, the four non-truck models in Tesla’s current lineup cover a fairly wide range of the different auto market segments in the United States. There isn’t a conventional “SUV,” but the Model X and Model Y are suitable replacements at the higher and less-high ends of the price category. The Model S is the luxury vehicle, and the Model 3 entices consumers at the entry level.
Tesla’s growth is still astounding, and completely unprecedented since Volkswagen entered the US market in the 1950s. In 2015, Tesla sold 18,000-some-odd vehicles. In 2022, it sold 535,069, gobbling up 3.92 percent of the entire market share in the United States, putting it on par with Subaru, and blowing Mazda straight out of the water, despite having a 50-year head start in brand recognition. The degree to which Tesla is the best-selling EV in the market is unimaginable: Nearly half of all the EVs sold in the United States in 2022 were from Tesla. And along with its EV technology, Tesla appears to be making great strides in autonomous driving technologies, despite hitting some regulatory snags in early 2023.
The other thing in Tesla’s corner is its proprietary charging stations. If you’ve tried charging an EV on a road trip, you know that it’s a little Wild West out there in terms of charging network providers. But Tesla owns its Supercharger stations, and they’re everywhere. In mid-2023 several manufacturers, beginning with Ford, announced their future EVs would be compatible with Tesla’s North American Charging Standard (NACS) and therefore able to take advantage of all those Superchargers. This instantly doubles the amount of chargers available to non-Tesla’s compatible with NACS.
Toyota
Toyota owned – and still owns – the hybrid market. But suddenly, Toyota found itself still in the starting blocks while new competitors and old were halfway around the track with EVs in production. As late as January 31, 2023, Toyota’s chief scientist Gill Pratt was still arguing that Toyota’s multi-pronged approach – which includes hybrids, plug-in hybrids, EVs and hydrogen power – will be the right way to reduce environmental impact, rather than reliance on battery-powered EVs alone. But then in June 2023, under leadership of newly appointed CEO Koji Sato, Toyota pivoted and announced what can be summed up as a more earnest and pronounced shift to investing in and producing EVs.
Its hybrids still set the benchmark, but the hydrogen-powered Mirai was hamstrung by supply issues. The battery-electric Toyota bZ4x – which shares all of its drivetrain with the Subaru Solterra–had a disastrous launch which resulted in a stop-sale order and months of delays for both brands.
In 2021, Toyota showed an array of 15 EV prototypes from the Toyota and Lexus brands, including an FJ Cruiser-like SUV, a pickup, small buses and a luxury sports car. Those ambitions have been significantly trimmed since, with only the compact crossover bZ making it to production. However, with Toyota’s new commitment to EVs, we wouldn’t be surprised if several of these are back on track.
