I suspect a large part of Americans slow adoption of EVs is simply that fuel is so cheap in the US. Anywhere else, electric cars are dramatically cheaper to run; I'm not sure this is so true in the US. In the UK we pay huge (>100%) fuel duty on petrol or diesel; electricity is subject only to a 5% VAT rate. And the untaxed resource cost of fuel is lower in the US to start with, of course.
Also electricity is artificially expensive, because the cost to attach service to a house is usually charged as part of an inflated per-watt cost, and consumers usually don't have access to the very cheap wholesale rates for daytime solar. At least, this is my understanding from discussions on Shift Key.
I'm a fairly well-off plug-in hybrid owner (3 yrs), living in blue states for 60+ years. Certainly I'm aware of anecdotes about contrarians in red states purposely blocking access to chargers, etc. But anecdotes often steal the lede from baser motivations: the wallet. (I think Texas is a prime example of this; massive adoption of solar/wind power while maintaining a "redder" attitude.) Anyway, I risk giving too much credence to my own story, but I think it's obviously true for many. many people. (a) the gas-powered version of my car was ~ 10k cheaper. (b) I was able to recoup almost all of this differential through US and (blue)state tax credits. But (c) the 7.5k was via tax credits, which means I had to OWE 7500 in US income tax to get 7500 back. I'm retired, so my solution was to move ~$45 k from a retirement (tax-deferred) account to my savings account; aka "income". So that I could be taxed $7500 at the end of the year. So that I could get a tax rebate of $7500. The Europeans among you may be surprised to learn that, for a couple, the first ~30k of income is tax-free (standard deduction), and the next ~$60k is taxed at ~11%. In other words, you have to have an income of over $100k to owe $7500 in taxes, and less than that means less rebate. I would bet a lot of money on the proposition that (US) people of any political persuasion would adopt EVs in far greater numbers if the price difference of the 2 models (gas and EV) were made equal in another way. Less maintenance = less cost, so EV's are a savings even at equal prices. As others have said, gas is cheap in the US, and politically it's easy to rationalize staying with gas. (I just want to add that the current administration tightened the rules on the tax credit essentially to domestically-produced vehicles, so the millions that might have bought a plugin hybrid Toyota were left with fewer options, which drives down adoption rates.)
Of course there are a lot of factors that influence the rate of EV adoption, with cost certainly the most important, probably followed (as you correctly assumed) the charging infrastructure. Population density and the sheer size of the country also plays into the considerations, I believe. In Europe, you are much less likely to cross a large stretch of land without a well built-out charing network.
It seems to me that until EVs present a clear economical case for adoption they are bound to remain a partisan issue. Purchasing an EV until then acts as a public signal - that you value reducing your carbon footprint more than the pure economics of purchasing and operating a vehicle and there is a sizeable rift between Republicans and Democrats on the issue.
Blue states are urban states, and urban states a) have a higher concentration of people with second cars, common in car-centric America and a common choice for an EV; and b) people in urban areas find EV’s more useful given the infrastructure to support them for longer trips is not yet well developed here. Right now in the USA it’s not a good idea to take one for a long trip since finding a charger will add significantly to the travel time.
Counterpoint, it's harder to charge your EV in urban areas due to lower charger per EV availability (and often lack of private parking where you can charge from your home, e.g. apartment buildings and cities/neighborhoods with very few garages like NYC).
If a state is poorer does it simply have an even lower rate of new car sale i.e. it imports secondhand cars from richer states? That could affect EV rates of adoption and cars on the road.
I wrote a story about EVs and spoke to people who had bought them and some who’d given them up. Two things emerged: range anxiety is a real concern for many. And just looking at numbers of chargers doesn’t tell you much. This is because 1) the type of charger matters; a super charger that can get you ready to go in minutes is a lot different than one that’ll take hours. And 2) former EV owners said they’d encountered too many out of service chargers, and you had no way to know until you actually get there.
I personally plan to buy an EV when my latest car needs replacement (but it’s a reliable Mazda3 so that will be awhile). Since my most common use is short trips, I’m not concerned about range anxiety. But I’ve observed that it’s important to other people. And there definitely is an attitude of animosity toward EVs by some. I find that annoying - to me it seems like interesting technology that’s still in an early state of adoption/buildout.
I wonder how much concern about range anxiety is rational? (Whilst understanding that most humans are not highly rational).
So I've heard: "I'd always be scared of what happens if the battery runs out".
Answer: "This is your second car which never travels more than 20 miles from your home".
I know at first I had "charger anxiety". As in: "Will the charger be available? Will it work? Will the App I'm forced to use work"?
Since then I've discovered the DC chargers are super good, always available and always working. Just expensive. And the AC charger are hopeless and besides I normally forget to pack the cable.
"One obvious explanation is just differences in attitudes to electric cars. "
Jumping to this as the first explanation is the Fundamental Attribution Error, and I would expect someone claiming to be a scientist to be on guard against that. Very disappointing.
I'd think average distance between public charging points might be a factor as well. Again driving the lower adoption rates in thinly populated mid west states.
I think you’re missing a key factor: Population density. A whole bunch of red states in the USA are rural with no significant population centers (ND, SD, IA, NE, MT, WY, AL all come to mind). The benefits will be smaller there, as people have to drive further AND there will be fewer charging stations.
It goes both ways though. High population density makes it harder to charge your EV, and many of those areas lack private parking/charging (e.g. apartment buildings and cities like NYC). I'm in NYC and the number one reason so few of us have EVs is because it's so impractical/unreliable to charge - parking is impossible and public charging is always taken.
I think that’s gonna vary based on the city. NYC is SUPER dense as compared to…just about everywhere. I’m near Portland, OR, and we can get chargers in the middle of downtown without an issue. I’ve also driven an EV around the LA area and ran into very few issues there - the only issue was in a specific garage right next to downtown LA. Everywhere else was easy.
Yeah, I don’t doubt that. However, I also happen to believe that finding a gas station in those cities is a bit tough. I know it’s tough in Paris, for example. Can’t imagine just finding a gas station in Manhattan is easy.
Yes, true. Manhattan has very few but I've never had to wait more than 5 minutes. I think that's the issue with EV charging - people park their cars in charging spots for who knows how long. If gas stations had EV quick charging with a limit of like 15-20 min that would be so helpful.
I find chargers pretty easy to get in the western states, but when there's a challenge, it's more often with the distance to the next charger and less often with it being full, so I would have plotted against chargers per area, rather than charges per car.
But, as you mentioned, there are so many confounding factors, it might still be hard to get clarity on abundance of chargers.
How about using population density as an explanatory variable? I just bought an EV (in Wyoming!) and a recent drive to Denver and back and even with a 300 miles range the 600 mile trip was an adventure in locating chargers. I also noticed that there's never a line for charging in Wyoming while there often is in Colorado. The lesson is that keeping supply and demand in balance while building out EVs is a challenge.
Thank you for this analysis, Hannah! I particularly enjoyed the number line-style visualizations and the scatterplot!
Two things that I think might be worth considering here, in addition to the many excellent points made by other commenters:
1) Access to home charging is certainly restricted in densely population areas, but this might also be true in areas where folks have lower incomes (regardless of population density) because it might be harder to charge in the driveway of a duplex or parking garage of a condo than at a single-family home. So the possible causal effect of income could be working through two avenues - higher incomes enable purchases of higher priced vehicles, and people with higher incomes are able to more easily charge their EVs at home.
2) I wonder if "EVs per charger" is the best metric to gauge the quality of the charging infrastructure. The problem seems to be that the marginal consumer decides against buying an EV because there are not enough chargers, rather than that chargers exist and but are being used by other EV drivers. A measure like total cars (including ICE) per charger or chargers per capita might be a convenient alternative.
To belabor this second point, a state with almost no chargers might have very few EVs, and those who buy EVs in this state might do almost all their charging at home (as was the case with early EV adoption). In the hypothetical limit where the number of chargers goes to zero, the number of EVs probably asymptotes to the nonzero number of people who would be happy with an EV even if they could only ever charge it at home. But the cars per charger metric goes to infinity, implying that there are enough chargers!
I got the last bit here backwards - let me correct it!
The EVs per charger metric going to infinity in the low-EV scenario precisely proves Hannah's point, since a high ratio is said to indicate a lack of chargers. I suppose the concern I have about the metric is more that it is scale-independent, so a state with few EVs and few chargers (so that new EV purchases are reduced by the lack of infrastructure) could have the same ratio as a state with relatively more EVs and more chargers.
Ultimately, it sems like the proximity to chargers at work, the grocery store, or along highways might be the most relevant factor for potential EV adopters, and this would be best proxied by a measure that takes the size of the state (like number of people or number of all cars) into account
I can't really divorce this subject from the extensive FUD that exists around it and certainly influences Americans, especially Republican-leaning ones. It's so bad and so pervasive that you have to give credence to the idea that it's state-sponsored.
I drive a BEV and even here in the UK, strangers are quite prepared to give me helpful advice like "the battery will be deffo knackered in 3 years mate", or ask questions such as "what do you do when you're waiting hours for it to charge?" or "you know they are worse for the environment than petrol cars right?". My responses are met with blank disbelief: "it's 4 and a half years old and the battery is completely fine"; "It charges whilst I'm asleep so on average it takes much less of my time per year than a petrol car"; and "no, they really aren't worse for the environment, that's been repeatedly debunked".
The only BEV horror story that's grounded in reality is the excessive depreciation, but who can blame the average "Jo" for avoiding buying second hand when their Facebook/TikTok/X/Instagram feed and newspaper articles are telling them that a 3 year old battery is either about to die or possibly explode? BEV's will win in the end because they are better for most purposes and will soon be cheaper, but the efforts of actors to delay this are working to some extent. I wonder what could be done to combat it.
Even as it appears impossible to imagine current society without cars, the idea has tremendous value, regardless of what car owners justify most often as a “vital necessity”. For it is not true, and in most cases a pathetic self-serving manifestation of capitalist tendencies. By ridding society of private cars, would allow us to re-create safer spaces and ecologically cleaner living environments. To return the streets to the people who live on them, and perhaps towards higher social solidarity and ecological sustainability. But, what about the electric car? Hardly makes a difference as to what type of car, when the prescient questions are about ecological damage and reformation, about unfair labor practices, first-world economic imperialism (human rights violation), endless extraction and irreversible environmental damage.
Here in Colorado, along the I25 corridor, I feel confident that we have the chargers required to move north and south around the Front Range without issues. The biggest impediment to getting an all-electric vehicle at this time is the lack of infrastructure I see in other states when we travel east to visit family. Personally I’ve been looking at plug in hybrid EVs as a transitional EV vehicle. It would run mostly as EV here in Colorado, but would handle the lack of infrastructure in other states.
I suspect a large part of Americans slow adoption of EVs is simply that fuel is so cheap in the US. Anywhere else, electric cars are dramatically cheaper to run; I'm not sure this is so true in the US. In the UK we pay huge (>100%) fuel duty on petrol or diesel; electricity is subject only to a 5% VAT rate. And the untaxed resource cost of fuel is lower in the US to start with, of course.
Yes I’m surprised Hannah didn’t cover this. Gas prices are much higher in California than in the rest of the US.
Also electricity is artificially expensive, because the cost to attach service to a house is usually charged as part of an inflated per-watt cost, and consumers usually don't have access to the very cheap wholesale rates for daytime solar. At least, this is my understanding from discussions on Shift Key.
I'm a fairly well-off plug-in hybrid owner (3 yrs), living in blue states for 60+ years. Certainly I'm aware of anecdotes about contrarians in red states purposely blocking access to chargers, etc. But anecdotes often steal the lede from baser motivations: the wallet. (I think Texas is a prime example of this; massive adoption of solar/wind power while maintaining a "redder" attitude.) Anyway, I risk giving too much credence to my own story, but I think it's obviously true for many. many people. (a) the gas-powered version of my car was ~ 10k cheaper. (b) I was able to recoup almost all of this differential through US and (blue)state tax credits. But (c) the 7.5k was via tax credits, which means I had to OWE 7500 in US income tax to get 7500 back. I'm retired, so my solution was to move ~$45 k from a retirement (tax-deferred) account to my savings account; aka "income". So that I could be taxed $7500 at the end of the year. So that I could get a tax rebate of $7500. The Europeans among you may be surprised to learn that, for a couple, the first ~30k of income is tax-free (standard deduction), and the next ~$60k is taxed at ~11%. In other words, you have to have an income of over $100k to owe $7500 in taxes, and less than that means less rebate. I would bet a lot of money on the proposition that (US) people of any political persuasion would adopt EVs in far greater numbers if the price difference of the 2 models (gas and EV) were made equal in another way. Less maintenance = less cost, so EV's are a savings even at equal prices. As others have said, gas is cheap in the US, and politically it's easy to rationalize staying with gas. (I just want to add that the current administration tightened the rules on the tax credit essentially to domestically-produced vehicles, so the millions that might have bought a plugin hybrid Toyota were left with fewer options, which drives down adoption rates.)
Of course there are a lot of factors that influence the rate of EV adoption, with cost certainly the most important, probably followed (as you correctly assumed) the charging infrastructure. Population density and the sheer size of the country also plays into the considerations, I believe. In Europe, you are much less likely to cross a large stretch of land without a well built-out charing network.
It seems to me that until EVs present a clear economical case for adoption they are bound to remain a partisan issue. Purchasing an EV until then acts as a public signal - that you value reducing your carbon footprint more than the pure economics of purchasing and operating a vehicle and there is a sizeable rift between Republicans and Democrats on the issue.
Blue states are urban states, and urban states a) have a higher concentration of people with second cars, common in car-centric America and a common choice for an EV; and b) people in urban areas find EV’s more useful given the infrastructure to support them for longer trips is not yet well developed here. Right now in the USA it’s not a good idea to take one for a long trip since finding a charger will add significantly to the travel time.
Counterpoint, it's harder to charge your EV in urban areas due to lower charger per EV availability (and often lack of private parking where you can charge from your home, e.g. apartment buildings and cities/neighborhoods with very few garages like NYC).
If a state is poorer does it simply have an even lower rate of new car sale i.e. it imports secondhand cars from richer states? That could affect EV rates of adoption and cars on the road.
That is accounted for by using percentages
I wrote a story about EVs and spoke to people who had bought them and some who’d given them up. Two things emerged: range anxiety is a real concern for many. And just looking at numbers of chargers doesn’t tell you much. This is because 1) the type of charger matters; a super charger that can get you ready to go in minutes is a lot different than one that’ll take hours. And 2) former EV owners said they’d encountered too many out of service chargers, and you had no way to know until you actually get there.
I personally plan to buy an EV when my latest car needs replacement (but it’s a reliable Mazda3 so that will be awhile). Since my most common use is short trips, I’m not concerned about range anxiety. But I’ve observed that it’s important to other people. And there definitely is an attitude of animosity toward EVs by some. I find that annoying - to me it seems like interesting technology that’s still in an early state of adoption/buildout.
I wonder how much concern about range anxiety is rational? (Whilst understanding that most humans are not highly rational).
So I've heard: "I'd always be scared of what happens if the battery runs out".
Answer: "This is your second car which never travels more than 20 miles from your home".
I know at first I had "charger anxiety". As in: "Will the charger be available? Will it work? Will the App I'm forced to use work"?
Since then I've discovered the DC chargers are super good, always available and always working. Just expensive. And the AC charger are hopeless and besides I normally forget to pack the cable.
"What explains the differences across US states?"
"One obvious explanation is just differences in attitudes to electric cars. "
Jumping to this as the first explanation is the Fundamental Attribution Error, and I would expect someone claiming to be a scientist to be on guard against that. Very disappointing.
I'd think average distance between public charging points might be a factor as well. Again driving the lower adoption rates in thinly populated mid west states.
I think you’re missing a key factor: Population density. A whole bunch of red states in the USA are rural with no significant population centers (ND, SD, IA, NE, MT, WY, AL all come to mind). The benefits will be smaller there, as people have to drive further AND there will be fewer charging stations.
It goes both ways though. High population density makes it harder to charge your EV, and many of those areas lack private parking/charging (e.g. apartment buildings and cities like NYC). I'm in NYC and the number one reason so few of us have EVs is because it's so impractical/unreliable to charge - parking is impossible and public charging is always taken.
I think that’s gonna vary based on the city. NYC is SUPER dense as compared to…just about everywhere. I’m near Portland, OR, and we can get chargers in the middle of downtown without an issue. I’ve also driven an EV around the LA area and ran into very few issues there - the only issue was in a specific garage right next to downtown LA. Everywhere else was easy.
That's fair. LA has the benefit of lots of private garages and chargers. Cities like NYC or Chicago and lots of Boston, it's going to be tough.
Yeah, I don’t doubt that. However, I also happen to believe that finding a gas station in those cities is a bit tough. I know it’s tough in Paris, for example. Can’t imagine just finding a gas station in Manhattan is easy.
Yes, true. Manhattan has very few but I've never had to wait more than 5 minutes. I think that's the issue with EV charging - people park their cars in charging spots for who knows how long. If gas stations had EV quick charging with a limit of like 15-20 min that would be so helpful.
I find chargers pretty easy to get in the western states, but when there's a challenge, it's more often with the distance to the next charger and less often with it being full, so I would have plotted against chargers per area, rather than charges per car.
But, as you mentioned, there are so many confounding factors, it might still be hard to get clarity on abundance of chargers.
How about using population density as an explanatory variable? I just bought an EV (in Wyoming!) and a recent drive to Denver and back and even with a 300 miles range the 600 mile trip was an adventure in locating chargers. I also noticed that there's never a line for charging in Wyoming while there often is in Colorado. The lesson is that keeping supply and demand in balance while building out EVs is a challenge.
Yup. This will take time and population density will definitely be a factor, and that’s directly correlated with red/blue voting.
Thank you for this analysis, Hannah! I particularly enjoyed the number line-style visualizations and the scatterplot!
Two things that I think might be worth considering here, in addition to the many excellent points made by other commenters:
1) Access to home charging is certainly restricted in densely population areas, but this might also be true in areas where folks have lower incomes (regardless of population density) because it might be harder to charge in the driveway of a duplex or parking garage of a condo than at a single-family home. So the possible causal effect of income could be working through two avenues - higher incomes enable purchases of higher priced vehicles, and people with higher incomes are able to more easily charge their EVs at home.
2) I wonder if "EVs per charger" is the best metric to gauge the quality of the charging infrastructure. The problem seems to be that the marginal consumer decides against buying an EV because there are not enough chargers, rather than that chargers exist and but are being used by other EV drivers. A measure like total cars (including ICE) per charger or chargers per capita might be a convenient alternative.
To belabor this second point, a state with almost no chargers might have very few EVs, and those who buy EVs in this state might do almost all their charging at home (as was the case with early EV adoption). In the hypothetical limit where the number of chargers goes to zero, the number of EVs probably asymptotes to the nonzero number of people who would be happy with an EV even if they could only ever charge it at home. But the cars per charger metric goes to infinity, implying that there are enough chargers!
I got the last bit here backwards - let me correct it!
The EVs per charger metric going to infinity in the low-EV scenario precisely proves Hannah's point, since a high ratio is said to indicate a lack of chargers. I suppose the concern I have about the metric is more that it is scale-independent, so a state with few EVs and few chargers (so that new EV purchases are reduced by the lack of infrastructure) could have the same ratio as a state with relatively more EVs and more chargers.
Ultimately, it sems like the proximity to chargers at work, the grocery store, or along highways might be the most relevant factor for potential EV adopters, and this would be best proxied by a measure that takes the size of the state (like number of people or number of all cars) into account
I can't really divorce this subject from the extensive FUD that exists around it and certainly influences Americans, especially Republican-leaning ones. It's so bad and so pervasive that you have to give credence to the idea that it's state-sponsored.
I drive a BEV and even here in the UK, strangers are quite prepared to give me helpful advice like "the battery will be deffo knackered in 3 years mate", or ask questions such as "what do you do when you're waiting hours for it to charge?" or "you know they are worse for the environment than petrol cars right?". My responses are met with blank disbelief: "it's 4 and a half years old and the battery is completely fine"; "It charges whilst I'm asleep so on average it takes much less of my time per year than a petrol car"; and "no, they really aren't worse for the environment, that's been repeatedly debunked".
The only BEV horror story that's grounded in reality is the excessive depreciation, but who can blame the average "Jo" for avoiding buying second hand when their Facebook/TikTok/X/Instagram feed and newspaper articles are telling them that a 3 year old battery is either about to die or possibly explode? BEV's will win in the end because they are better for most purposes and will soon be cheaper, but the efforts of actors to delay this are working to some extent. I wonder what could be done to combat it.
Even as it appears impossible to imagine current society without cars, the idea has tremendous value, regardless of what car owners justify most often as a “vital necessity”. For it is not true, and in most cases a pathetic self-serving manifestation of capitalist tendencies. By ridding society of private cars, would allow us to re-create safer spaces and ecologically cleaner living environments. To return the streets to the people who live on them, and perhaps towards higher social solidarity and ecological sustainability. But, what about the electric car? Hardly makes a difference as to what type of car, when the prescient questions are about ecological damage and reformation, about unfair labor practices, first-world economic imperialism (human rights violation), endless extraction and irreversible environmental damage.
"EVs are ugly" is a big reason I hear to be honest. More model choices to give the feeling of uniqueness is important to American buyers.
Also, I dug further into the charger availability red herring a couple of months ago is anyone is interested after reading this piece.
https://sustainableadvantages.substack.com/p/fantastic-evs-and-where-to-find-them
Here in Colorado, along the I25 corridor, I feel confident that we have the chargers required to move north and south around the Front Range without issues. The biggest impediment to getting an all-electric vehicle at this time is the lack of infrastructure I see in other states when we travel east to visit family. Personally I’ve been looking at plug in hybrid EVs as a transitional EV vehicle. It would run mostly as EV here in Colorado, but would handle the lack of infrastructure in other states.