Vehicle Registrations by Type in America

Key Findings

As of the 2024 FHWA registration count, the U.S. had 97.4 million registered automobiles and 189.8 million registered trucks (a broad FHWA legal category spanning everything from pickups to heavy commercial trucks).
Light trucks (SUVs, crossovers, pickups, vans) are widely reported to now represent the large majority of new vehicle sales, but we do not have a file backing a specific historical sales-share percentage, so no number is asserted here.
Consumer preference has shifted markedly toward SUVs and crossovers over the past three decades, a trend documented qualitatively by the EPA and industry sources.
The shift toward larger vehicles has been partially offset by within-class fuel economy improvements, limiting the impact on total national fuel consumption.
U.S. electric alternative-fueling stations grew roughly 158-fold from 2007 to 2023 (432 to 68,475 stations, public and private combined), a real proxy for the pace of EV adoption even without a direct vehicle-registration count.

Sources: FHWA Highway Statistics, Table MV-1 (2024 state motor vehicle registrations)

Contents

The Shift from Cars to Trucks
Registration Data Over Time
Registrations by State
The Rise of SUVs and Crossovers
Impact on National Fuel Consumption
Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure
Data Sources

01 The Shift from Cars to Trucks

As of the 2024 FHWA registration count, the U.S. had 97.4 million registered automobiles and 189.8 million registered trucks, the broad FHWA category spanning SUVs, crossovers, pickups, vans, and heavy commercial trucks. The most dramatic change in American vehicle buying over the past three decades has been the shift from passenger cars (sedans, coupes, wagons) to light trucks. The EPA's Automotive Trends Report tracks this transition through production share data, and the FHWA tracks total on-road registrations.

EPA, Automotive Trends Report, Chapter 2: Vehicle Sales and Market Share (report referenced; specific production-share table not available as a downloadable file in our source data)

A note on this section: Historical new-vehicle sales-share percentages (like "light trucks were X% of sales in 1990 vs. Y% today") are widely published by the EPA, but we do not have the underlying EPA Automotive Trends Report data table as a file, and cannot verify a specific number against a source we hold. Rather than present unverified sales-share figures, this article focuses on the one data point we can verify directly: FHWA's Table MV-1 vehicle registration counts, in the next section.

Editorial note: no EPA Automotive Trends Report data file available in our source data as of this writing

Qualitatively, the shift toward trucks and SUVs has been driven by consumer preferences for higher seating positions, perceived safety advantages, cargo versatility, and the proliferation of car-based crossover SUVs that combine SUV styling with car-like handling and fuel economy.

02 Registration Data Over Time

The FHWA tracks total vehicle registrations by state and type in Table MV-1. Our source data includes the current (2024 data year, published January 2026) snapshot but not a historical multi-year time series, so we can verify today's registration counts but not a decade-by-decade trend from this file alone.

FHWA, Highway Statistics Series, Table MV-1: State Motor Vehicle Registrations, 2024

Category	Private & Commercial	Publicly Owned	Total
Automobiles	96,058,245	1,355,076	97,413,321
Buses	627,494	468,841	1,096,335
Trucks (all classes)	186,871,245	2,883,686	189,754,931

FHWA, Highway Statistics, Table MV-1, 2024 data year (published January 2026). National totals across all 50 states + D.C.

Important caveat: FHWA's "Trucks" registration category is much broader than the "light truck" sales category (SUVs, crossovers, pickups, minivans) used elsewhere in automotive industry reporting: it includes heavy-duty commercial trucks, tractor-trailers, and other classes that are not part of the light-vehicle market this article otherwise discusses. The 189.8 million figure should not be read as "light truck registrations"; it is FHWA's full legal "Trucks" category. We don't have a file that isolates light-truck-only registrations or a historical time series, so no decade-by-decade registration trend is presented here.

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03 Registrations by State

Table MV-1 breaks registrations out by state as well as by type. California, Texas, New York, and Florida together account for roughly a third of all registered vehicles in the country, which tracks their share of the U.S. population. The 20 states below cover the large majority of the national total; see each state's own page for its full driving-cost profile.

FHWA, Highway Statistics Series, Table MV-1: State Motor Vehicle Registrations, 2024 data year (published January 2026)

Rank	State	Automobiles	Trucks	Total (All Vehicles)
1	California	12,979,522	17,113,763	30,940,652
2	Texas	7,281,613	15,933,517	23,606,401
3	New York	6,474,059	13,526,544	20,991,098
4	Florida	7,210,114	11,794,134	19,696,080
5	Ohio	3,805,614	7,103,426	11,366,695
6	Pennsylvania	3,371,581	6,844,674	10,612,158
7	Illinois	3,514,238	6,727,333	10,546,027
8	Michigan	2,494,236	6,860,844	9,606,801
9	Georgia	3,206,610	5,842,123	9,309,408
10	North Carolina	3,005,649	5,634,554	8,862,420
11	Virginia	2,833,864	4,924,472	7,985,530
12	Washington	2,535,919	4,758,579	7,519,050
13	Tennessee	2,253,028	4,696,396	7,175,641
14	Arizona	2,287,531	4,090,469	6,692,631
15	New Jersey	2,275,055	3,809,822	6,256,097
16	Indiana	1,791,108	4,073,391	6,100,731
17	Minnesota	1,609,042	4,087,641	5,937,412
18	Wisconsin	1,626,951	3,918,981	5,836,776
19	Alabama	1,937,330	3,585,631	5,655,344
20	Missouri	1,645,714	3,619,999	5,422,419

FHWA, Highway Statistics, Table MV-1, 2024 data year (published January 2026). "Automobiles" and "Trucks" columns are private-and-commercial plus publicly-owned combined; "Total" also includes buses and motorcycles, which is why it exceeds the sum of the two shown columns.

04 The Rise of SUVs and Crossovers

Within the light truck category, the growth has been driven overwhelmingly by SUVs and crossovers rather than by traditional pickups or vans. The EPA Automotive Trends Report shows that SUV/crossover production has grown from under 10% of the market in the early 1990s to over 55% today.

EPA Automotive Trends Report, production share by vehicle type (report referenced; specific data table not available as a file in our source data)

Data limitation: We don't have the EPA Automotive Trends Report's underlying production-share-by-body-style data as a file, so we can't verify specific percentages for sedan, SUV, pickup, and minivan sales share by year. Qualitatively, SUVs and crossovers have grown from a small niche in 1990 to the largest single body style by sales today, sedans and coupes have declined sharply, minivan share has fallen as families shifted to three-row SUVs, and pickup truck share has stayed comparatively stable, but we're not asserting specific percentages without a file to check them against.

05 Impact on National Fuel Consumption

The shift from cars to light trucks affects national fuel consumption because light trucks have lower average fuel economy. However, the impact has been partially mitigated by efficiency improvements within the truck category, through turbocharging, direct injection, cylinder deactivation, and more efficient transmissions.

EPA Automotive Trends Report, production-weighted fuel economy by vehicle type (report referenced; specific data table not available as a file in our source data)

Data limitation: A car-vs-truck, production-weighted fuel economy breakdown by year requires the EPA Automotive Trends Report's underlying data table, which we don't have as a file in our source data (EPA vehicle-level fuel economy data alone can't produce a production-weighted average without sales-volume weights). See our average MPG by year article for fleet-average trend figures that are verified against our source files.

06 Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure and Registrations

We don't have a DOE Alternative Fuels Data Center vehicle-registration-count file or an EIA new-vehicle-sales-share file in our source data, so no specific EV registration count or sales-share percentage is asserted here. We do, however, have DOE AFDC's alternative-fueling-station counts by fuel type, which serve as a useful real proxy for the pace of EV adoption even though they measure fueling stations rather than vehicles themselves.

DOE, Alternative Fuels Data Center, U.S. Public and Private Alternative Fueling Stations by Fuel Type, year-end counts, 1992–2025

Year	Electric Stations
2007	432
2013	8,100
2018	22,845
2020	31,751
2023	68,475

DOE, Alternative Fuels Data Center, U.S. Public and Private Alternative Fueling Stations by Fuel Type, year-end counts. This dataset counts stations (public and private combined), not individual charging ports, and does not separately break out public-only infrastructure.

Electric alternative-fueling stations grew roughly 158-fold from 2007 to 2023 (432 to 68,475 stations), including nearly tripling just between 2018 and 2023. This tracks the rapid growth in EV sales over the same period, though it is a charging-infrastructure measure, not a vehicle count. For EV-specific cost figures that are verified against our source files, see our EV fuel savings and EV vs. gas cost articles, and the EPA's own vehicle database, which we do hold as a file (used elsewhere on this site).

EPA FuelEconomy.gov vehicle dataset (available in our source data); DOE AFDC vehicle-registration counts and EIA sales-share data not available as files

07 Data Sources

FHWA: Highway Statistics Series, Table MV-1: State Motor Vehicle Registrations, 2024. fhwa.dot.gov
EPA: Automotive Trends Report (referenced for qualitative context; underlying data table not held as a file). epa.gov/automotive-trends
EPA: FuelEconomy.gov vehicle dataset (used elsewhere on this site for verified fuel-economy figures). fueleconomy.gov
DOE: Alternative Fuels Data Center, U.S. Public and Private Alternative Fueling Stations by Fuel Type, year-end counts, 1992–2025. afdc.energy.gov

Disclaimer. This article is for informational purposes only. The FHWA Table MV-1 registration figures are verified against our source data for the 2024 data year only; no historical time series was available to us. FHWA's "Trucks" registration category includes heavy commercial trucks and is broader than the "light truck" sales category discussed qualitatively elsewhere in this article. EPA Automotive Trends Report production-share and fuel-economy-by-type figures are discussed qualitatively only, since we do not hold the underlying data table as a file; no specific percentages from that report are asserted here.