New data shows a significant percentage of Americans who own electric vehicles have regrets about their purchase.
McKinsey & Company Mobility Consumer Pulse According to a 2024 EV market forecast released this month, 46% of U.S. EV owners said they are “very likely” to return to a gasoline-powered vehicle for their next purchase.
The high percentage of Americans looking to change jobs has even surprised consulting firms.
“We didn’t expect that,” said Philip Kampshoff, director of McKinsey’s Center for Future Mobility. Automotive News“I thought, ‘Once I buy an EV, I’m going to keep buying EVs.'”
In a survey of nearly 37,000 consumers globally, only Australia, at 49%, was more likely to say they were ready to return to internal combustion engine vehicles than the US.
Other countries surveyed were Brazil, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Norway. Across all countries, the average percentage of respondents who said they wanted to give up their EV was 29%.
The top reason EV owners cited for wanting to return to gasoline-powered cars was a lack of available charging infrastructure (35%), with the second most common reason being that the overall cost of owning an EV is too high (34%). Nearly one in three (32%) said owning an EV has affected their driving patterns for long-distance trips too much.
McKinsey said consumer satisfaction with the availability of charging stations globally has improved somewhat since last year’s survey, but “there is still significant room for improvement.”
Among EV owners in each country, 11% said they felt there was a good charging point infrastructure in their area, 40% said there were not enough chargers along highways and main roads, and 38% said there were not enough chargers close to their home.
The survey results come years after the Biden administration has encouraged U.S. consumers and automakers to embrace EVs, and they back up other recent polls showing a majority of Americans still don’t support a shift to all-electric vehicles.
To further Biden’s EV agenda, Democrats have passed an infrastructure bill in 2021 that promises to spend billions of dollars in taxpayer funds to build 500,000 charging stations across the U.S. by the end of the decade.
But three years later, only seven federally funded chargers have been built, and the slow progress has drawn criticism from both sides of the political aisle.
