Nearly half of American EV owners want to switch back to gas-powered vehicle, McKinsey data shows
FILE-A Toyota Rav4 plugin hybrid charges at a ChargePoint charger in front of City Hall in Portland (Photo by Gregory Rec/Portland Press Herald via Getty Images)
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.'"
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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.
To further Biden's EV agenda, Democrats passed infrastructure legislation in 2021 that committed billions of taxpayer dollars to building a half million charging stations in the U.S. by the end of the decade.
But three years later, only seven federally funded chargers have been built to date, and the slow progress has sparked condemnation from both sides of the political aisle.
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