Americans are losing interest in electric cars, polling shows | The percent of Americans who own or are interested in owning an EV has dropped eight points since 2023.

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I blame Elon Musk, who has done incredible damage not only to his own brand, but to the idea of EVs.

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The planned charging infrastructure just not coming to fruition is probably a contributor. We bought an EV (not a Tesla) in 2021 and while we like it a lot, range anxiety is definitely a thing. There's some places where if we want to go there, we have to take 30+ minute detours to find a charging station.
- It's basically that and the stupid high prices of EVs and cars in general. People assume that EVs cost too much and don't even bother to look at the options.
  But when I researched gently-used EVs I found that the prices weren't so bad. I could have gotten a fairly new (1 to 3 yrs old) EV for the 20-30k ballpark but I did not because there's no chargers in my town. Instead we got a PHEV and charge at home, driving on gas for longer trips.
  
  Interesting. The place that matters for chargers is usually home, where people install their own — public chargers are basically for when you're on a road trip, and wouldn't have charged up the night before.
  
  That’s a very single-family-home perspective. Lots of people live in apartments, only some of which provide assigned off-street parking at all, but there’s generally no way to install your own charger. Public charging infrastructure is absolutely critical for all apartment dwellers to be able to consider EVs.
  
  For sure, as is apartment owner support for installing chargers, which is mostly what I've seen around here
  
  Sure, that can help, although I think it mostly counts as public charging infrastructure since it’s out of the control of the EV owner.
  It also doesn’t help for the many units in my city that rely on street parking. And it’s an extra feeling of uncertainty if you’re thinking about buying an EV but you change apartment leases every year or three - it’s like getting a dog and thereby limiting the available pool of apartments that you might consider in the future.
  All of that is to say that true public charging is really critical for a lot of people to feel secure enough to invest new car dollars into an EV, so presidential headwinds against it are devastating.
  
  When we need to get another car (which hopefully won't be for a while), we'll definitely go the PHEV route.
  The EV we bought was 42k new, but we were able to take advantage of 10k in government rebates (which were the only reason we went new instead of used - the rebates were not available on used ones; the end result was that it cost about the same as a used one would have in our area.) Those rebates obviously aren't available anymore, though, which makes them considerably less palatable.
  
  20-30k is massively outside of the price range of many Americans, who rely on buying older used vehicles for sub $10k.
  
  Yep that's how it has been since last century. But the 20k price range is also pretty normal for newer cars as well, which shows that EVs are affordable for the section of the population who normally buys those normally priced new cars.
  
  Not having public chargers where you live shouldn’t be a factor. You’d be charging at home. The real issue is where the public chargers are along your lengthy routes traveled.
  
  Yeah I know about that since we can only charge at home. The problem is the lack of chargers everywhere I go, they are just not easy to find. For example, there are none in my town, as I said.

31 comments