Nearly Half of American EV Owners Likely to Switch to Gas-Powered Cars, Study Finds

WASHINGTON (TND) — Nearly half of Americans who currently own an electric vehicle will likely switch to a gas-powered car, according to a McKinsey & Company study published this month.

Forty-six percent of electric vehicle owners told the consulting firm they would likely switch back to a more traditional car. Of the nine countries surveyed, which include Australia, Brazil, China, Germany, Norway, France, Italy and Japan, the U.S. had the second-highest percentage.

Thirty-five percent of the global respondents cited inadequate charging infrastructure as a reason to switch back. Meanwhile, 4 in 10 global participants in the survey said chargers were missing along highways and other main roads. They also picked a range of other reasons for not wanting to buy an electric car, including low familiarity with them, technology skepticism and cost of ownership.

The Biden administration has aimed to create a reliable and convenient network of 500,000 chargers across the U.S., investing $7.5 billion into it.

However, the likeliness to buy electric vehicles has grown over the past three years. In 2021, 14% of gas-powered car owners said their next vehicle would be electric, compared to 18% in February, according to the study.

The Biden administration has said more people will buy electric cars at a quicker rate if infrastructure improves and vehicle prices decrease, with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttegieg telling CBS News last month the U.S. needs to have a central role in growing the market.

Just making sure we invest in America’s capacity, making sure that we are on-shoring or friend-shoring the materials and the processing of what goes into these EVs, making sure that America masters these processes,” he said. “Because look, there’s no way that we’re gonna get to the middle of this century with the technology that we counted on a century ago.”

Former President Donald Trump has criticized the current administration’s push toward electric vehicles, claiming the public doesn’t want them.

He’s trying to save the electrical vehicle, but not the gas powered, which is the vehicle that everybody wants. They’re going crazy with the electric car, costing us a fortune,” Trump said in May. “We’re spending hundreds of billions of dollars subsidizing a car that nobody wants and nobody’s ever gonna buy.”

Buttigieg has resisted this argument, telling CBS News that every year more Americans buy electric cars than the year prior.

Have questions, concerns or tips? Send them to Ray at [email protected].