By Breck Dumas
A significant share of Americans who own an electric vehicle have buyer’s remorse, according to new data.
McKinsey & Co.’s Mobility Consumer Pulse for 2024, released this month, found that 46% of EV owners in the U.S. said they were “very” likely to switch back to owning a gas-powered vehicle in their next purchase.
The high percentage of Americans who want to make a switch even surprised the consulting firm.
“I didn’t expect that,” the head of McKinsey’s Center for Future Mobility, Philipp Kampshoff, told Automotive News. “I thought, ‘Once an EV buyer, always an EV buyer.’”
In the poll of nearly 37,000 consumers worldwide, Australia was the only country with a greater percentage, 49%, of EV owners than the U.S. who said they were ready to return to owning an internal combustion engine.
The other countries included in the survey were Brazil, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Norway. Across all countries surveyed, the average share of respondents who want to ditch their EVs was 29%.
The biggest reason EV owners cited for wanting to return to owning a gas-powered vehicle was the lack of available charging infrastructure (35%); the second-highest reason cited was that the total cost of owning an EV was too high (34%). Nearly 1 in 3, 32%, said their driving patterns on long-distance trips were affected too much due to having an EV.
McKinsey found that consumers’ satisfaction globally with charging availability has improved some since last year’s survey but noted it “still has a long way to go.”
Of the EV owners across all countries, 11% said the infrastructure where they live is well set up in terms of charge points, 40% said there were not enough chargers along highways and main roads, and 38% said there were not enough chargers in close proximity to them.
The findings come years into the Biden administration’s push for U.S. consumers and automakers to embrace EVs and reinforce other recent polling that indicates a major chunk of Americans are still not sold on going all-electric.
AI’s are eating up huge amounts of electricity.
And for what?
So you can “interview,” Einstein?
So you can create fake art in whatever style you want?
What a total waste!
EV’s OTOH, can at least get you from here to there.
They just cost too much doing it.
Most purchasers had the virtue signalling thing going that drove them to a bad buy.
Now they have buyer’s remorse, but the resale value is in the toilet.
And add to that EVs are dangerous.
MAGAs, if they’d existed in 1910: “There aren’t enough petrol stations for me to be able to fuel my car as much as I need to. Oh, well—back to horses, I guess. “
Electric cars were actually available in 1910. One would think that if they were viable, they would have been made so by now.
There were about 18 cars per 1000 people in 1910. Your analogy is stupid.
My daughter and son-in-law had a Tesla. For the most part, they loved it. It served her purposes well, mainly going to work and back while they used a crew-cap pickup for the family. I drove it once when they first got it and, no doubt, those things are neat and fun to drive. But, there were problems.
First, the tires and wheels. An electric sedan weighs as much as a full size pickup. They choose the low-profile tires option, which was a disaster. Hit a pothole, bust a wheel. Then, after a couple of years, my daughter was rear-ended on the highway. Not a high-speed accident but one where everyone was stopping, she got stopped but the car behind her didn’t. The car was totaled. While they wanted to get another one, they didn’t get enough money back and the interest was outrageous on new ones, so they went back to ICE.
All in all, except for very limited purposes, these things are simply not practical.
True story:
Mom sets up her baby’s car seat then closes the door to go to the drivers’ side and get in.
Battery is dead.
So?
Her key won’t work!
It’s Arizona on a hot day.
Baby is stuck inside.
All Fire & Rescue can do is break a window with an ax.
Click photo for story:
I don’t know why EV’s are made to be so complex, with so many bells and whistles. Maybe all the computerized trappings is cheap compared to the cost of batteries and motors, but I would like to see what a bare-bones EV (with door locks that you can turn with a key) would cost.
Look how EVs are affecting earth’s bottom line with regard CO2 lowering:
?resize=768%2C429&ssl=1
China is where most EVs are made.
And China gets a pass on emissions because they are an “emerging economy”. What kind of bullshit is that?