2017 was the best year ever for electric vehicle sales in the US

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The good people over at Inside EVs have done their tabulating, and the numbers are in: in 2017, very nearly 200,000 electric vehicles were sold in the US. The actual number they calculate-199,826-is a significant increase on 2016, itself a banner year for EVs when 158,614 found homes. What's even more impressive is that overall new car sales were actually down year-on-year for the first time since 2009. Still, to keep things in context, more than 17 million new cars were sold in 2017. So electrics have a long way to go.

As expected, Tesla remains at the head of the pack. The Model S, now in its fifth year of sales, remains the nation's best-selling EV with 27,060 sold, no mean feat for a vehicle that starts at $74,500. And the Model X SUV had a good year, too, finding more than 21,000 buyers to become the third-best-selling EV.

Despite this, Tesla garnered plenty of lukewarm press on Wednesday as it revealed that Model 3 production will remain far lower than Elon Musk had been promising for at least the next quarter. Musk had set a target of 5,000 Model 3s per week by the end of 2017, a figure he now says won't happen until Q2 2018 at the earliest.

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