The Core Correlation, Confirmed Twice
25% of EV owners also own a rooftop solar photovoltaic system, versus just 8% of non-EV owners, a gap of more than 3 to 1. Two independent trade-press outlets report the identical figures, both naming NREL as the study’s home institution: the American Public Power Association puts it as more than two in five EV owners studied having also possessed photovoltaic solar systems in one framing, 25% in the direct figure, and pv magazine separately reports “around about one-quarter of EV owners also own PV systems, while only 8% of people who do not own EVs have adopted distributed solar.” Two publishers independently reporting the same number from the same underlying study is a meaningfully stronger form of confirmation than a single citation.
Tracing the Numbers to Their Source
The study behind both reports is titled “The Electric Vehicles-Solar Photovoltaics Nexus: Driving Cross-Sectoral Adoption of Sustainable Technologies,” led by NREL researcher Shivam Sharda of the Center for Integrated Mobility Sciences, with UC Santa Barbara and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory contributing and DOE’s Vehicle Technologies Office providing funding. The underlying survey, the WholeTraveler Transportation Behavior Study, covered 869 households in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2018, with a 2022 follow-up analysis layering in national Residential Energy Consumption Survey data. That is a regional, 2018-dated foundation, not a fresh, nationally representative 2026 survey, and any claim built on this correlation should carry that scope with it.
What Correlation Does Not Tell You
A household being more likely to own both an EV and solar does not establish which one came first, or whether some third factor, household income, environmental values, or simply owning a home with a suitable roof, is driving both decisions independently. The study documents an association strong enough to be worth building a sales or partnership strategy around, not a proven causal chain where selling one product reliably produces the other. Framed that way, the honest use of this data is as a targeting signal, EV owners are meaningfully likelier solar prospects than the general population, not a guarantee that any individual EV owner is close to a solar decision.
The Numbers
25% of EV owners also own a rooftop solar photovoltaic system, versus 8% of non-EV owners, a gap of more than 3 to 1.
A second, independent trade-press report cites identical figures from the same NREL-led study: roughly one-quarter of EV owners own solar versus 8% of non-EV owners.
pv magazine, EV owners more likely to install rooftop solar on homes
The study, “The Electric Vehicles-Solar Photovoltaics Nexus,” is led by NREL researcher Shivam Sharda with UC Santa Barbara and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, funded by DOE’s Vehicle Technologies Office.
The underlying survey covered 869 households in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2018, with a 2022 follow-up analysis using national Residential Energy Consumption Survey data, not a fresh 2026 national survey.
Sources
The external data in this article draws on the sources below. Figures described in the text as estimates or industry triangulations are directional and are not attributed to a single dataset.
- American Public Power Association, citing NREL research
- pv magazine, EV owners more likely to install rooftop solar on homes