About 61 percent of Americans have varying degrees of unfavorable opinions about electric vehicles, supporting the recent drop in demand for them.
Almost all major electric vehicle manufacturers, including Tesla and Chinese rival BYD, saw sales declines in the first quarter of 2024.
This has been a trend that has been going on for a long time, with demand for these cars dropping precipitously throughout 2023 after a boom in interest during 2022.
Given this change of course on the part of the American consumer, the Wall Street Journal partnered with Morning Consult to survey 864 American adults about why they have unfavorable opinions about electric vehicles.
Respondents gave 10 reasons why EVs just aren’t for them: The top three are “cost,” “there aren’t enough charging stations available,” and EVs aren’t as reliable as gasoline-powered vehicles. .
Tesla CEO Elon Musk (right) with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz (center) and Brandenburg State Premier Dietmar Woidke at the Tesla ‘Gigafactory’ on March 22, 2022 in Gruenheide, Al southeast of Berlin.
Tesla’s sales fell 20 percent in the first quarter of 2024 compared to deliveries it made in the last quarter of 2023.
A recent iSeeCars survey found that electric vehicles cost 63.6 percent more per 1,000 miles driven per year compared to gasoline cars. This is because electric cars end up being driven less than gasoline cars.
Consumers can also expect to pay more upfront for electric vehicles.
The average price paid for a new electric vehicle in February was just over $52,000which is about $5,000 more than you’d expect to pay for a new gas car.
However, the sticker price is not all there is to consider because unless you are leasing your car, the purpose of buying one is for it to last as long as possible without any major problems.
Because electric vehicle technology is much newer than the systems that have been inside gasoline cars for decades, drivers report having many more problems with electric vehicles.
Among the most frequently reported problems are problems with the battery and charging system, as well as failures in the fit of body panels and interior parts of the vehicles.
Accordingly, 57 percent of people surveyed in the Wall Street Journal survey cited their belief that electric vehicles do not perform as well as gasoline-powered vehicles as a major reason for their negative opinions of electric vehicles.
The Kia EV6 GT is on display during the 2024 New York International Auto Show. The base model’s MSRP is over $61,000, while the gas-powered Kia Selto, another SUV, has a starting MSRP of around $24,500.
Not only do automakers face reliability issues and prohibitively high upfront costs, they now have to deal with customers’ ideological beliefs when it comes to electric vehicles.
A sizable share (20 percent) said electric vehicles run counter to their political views, according to the Journal survey.
As the White House pushes the nation toward a future in which two-thirds of new cars sold must be electric vehicles or plug-in hybrids, conservatives have come out strongly against such mandates.
Mike Murphy, a Republican strategist, told the Journal that he was frustrated by his party’s consistently negative view of electric vehicles.
Murphy is from Detroit, which was known as the center of auto manufacturing for decades, and formed a nonprofit to ease the political divide over electric vehicles and consult with automakers on ways to attract customers. ideologically driven Americans.
Steven Center, head of Kia operations in the United States, next to the Kia EV9. He recently told the Wall Street Journal that he is aware that Americans view electric vehicles through a political lens.
“There is a resistance of hearts and minds to electric vehicles, especially on the Republican side,” Murphy said. “If you can’t end that tribalism, the industry won’t sell enough electric vehicles” to meet Biden’s rules.
However, it’s not as complicated as Republicans simply hating electric vehicles.
Tesla remains the world’s leading electric vehicle company despite the company’s recent setbacks and layoffs, and its CEO, Elon Musk, has taken a much more right-wing disposition on hot-button political issues.
Steven Center, head of Kia’s U.S. operations, said he is aware of how electric vehicles have become a political issue for many Americans.
—Do you know that old saying: “Don’t talk about religion or politics?” I think you can add electric vehicles to that,” he told the Journal.
