How can I save the view to sort by CPU usage?

Run htop, press F6, select CPU%.

Quit by using F10

If it doesn't remember your settings check your ~/.config/htop/htoprc file if it is writable by your user. You might make it writable like this:

chown $USER ~/.config/htop/htoprc

Or you can try removing it and let htop generate a new one, maybe the old one is corrupted somehow.

rm ~/.config/htop/htoprc

I noticed I had to actually quit properly using F10 and not Ctrl + C for htop to save the sort by column.

Other solutions are better, but if all else fails, you can make an alias for htop -s PERCENT_CPU.