What’s markedly different about the plug-in vehicle market this summer is the growing presence of some of the world’s largest carmakers. Ford began slowly delivering its $40,000 Focus Electric to dealers in May (a month in which just six units were sold) and was expecting to ship 350 cars to dealerships in California, New Jersey and New York by the end of June.

Honda plans to start leasing its Fit EV for $389 a month in California and Oregon on July 20, with a move into six East Coast markets next year.

Certainly, electric vehicles are still in their tentative early days. “There will be model launches, but each one will be a few hundred or a few thousand,” Michael Omotoso, a senior manager of LMC Automotive, a research firm, said in a telephone interview last week. "We don’t expect an E.V. to be a big seller like the Toyota Prius anytime soon. But we also don’t expect any of these cars to be a big disaster.”

LMC’s forecast for 2012 puts sales of all-electric vehicles at only one-tenth of 1 percent of the nation’s light-vehicle market, or about 12,000 vehicles. And plug-in hybrids, which have a gasoline engine as well as an electric drive system that can be charged with a cord, are projected to claim three-tenths of a percent, or about 40,000 units.

For automakers, Mr. Omotoso said, “the significance is to show that you can produce an electric vehicle at a price that maybe not the average consumer can afford, but a lot of consumers can afford.” He added, “It’s a first step toward having a significant number of electric vehicles in the next 10 to 20 years."

As for Tesla, the Model S release is but one of its milestones this summer. In addition to opening five new stores, Tesla will provide the battery pack and powertrain for the $50,000 Toyota RAV4 EV, which goes on sale late this summer in San Diego, Los Angeles, Sacramento and the Bay Area. This electric crossover follows the rollout, in March, of a plug-in version of the Prius hybrid. Through May, Toyota sold 3,631 Prius Plug-ins, the majority of them in California.

Smaller players are adding to the bubbling E.V. activity in California, too. An electric motorcycle company, Brammo, plans to ship its long-promised Empulse R model this summer. By early August, a start-up called Scoot Networks will offer more than 50 electric scooters to members through a scooter-sharing program in San Francisco. Also over the summer, a Bay Area nonprofit, City CarShare, plans to make a big push for members to rent plug-in models it is adding to its fleet.