Policymakers inside the Biden administration have repeatedly assured Americans that electric vehicles (EVs) are an unavoidable and essential part of the “net-zero” carbon emissions world that they’re trying to regulate into existence. But despite hefty subsidies and future bans of gasoline-powered cars, Americans aren’t ready to jump on the EV bandwagon, the latest I&I/TIPP Poll shows.
For our most recent online public opinion poll of 1,412 drivers, taken from May 3-5, we asked a straightforward question of consumer intent: “How likely will you consider buying/leasing an electric vehicle for your next car?”
Among those responding, 53% said they were “not likely” to consider an electric car, while 39% said they were “likely” to. The poll has a margin of error of +/-2.6 percentage points.
But, to spout an inevitable cliche, the devil once again lurks in the details. Just 16% of those answering the poll said they’re “very likely” to consider an EV, versus 23% who said they were “somewhat likely.”
On the other side, more than a third — 36% — said they were “not at all likely” to consider an EV. Another 17% said they’re “not very likely” to do so.
But the breakdown of prospective buyers and non-buyers of EVs shows some interesting patterns.
Those who are young are far more inclined to embrace the EV concept, with 51% of those 18-24 and 58% among those in the 25-44 year range saying they are “likely” to consider buying an EV. For the 45-64 and 65-plus age groups, the comparable “likely” answers are 30% and just 15%, respectively.
And if enthusiasm for EVs has a political face, it’s definitely a donkey. Among Democrats, 56% say they’re likely to buy an EV, compared to 20% of Republicans and 32% of independents.
Race is yet another interesting difference, and it’s major. Just 32% of white Americans say they’re likely to buy an EV, compared to 56% of blacks and Hispanics. Another demographic gap in EV enthusiasm: Gender. Only 30% of women said they’re likely to get an EV, vs. 48% of men.
We asked another question about EVs, this time factoring in fuel costs: “How likely are you to consider buying/leasing an electric vehicle for your next car if electricity to run the car costs more than gasoline or fuel for a hybrid?”
The answers show significant sensitivity to costs. When the cost of electricity exceeds the cost of gasoline, the “likely” to buy an EV answer shrank to 32% from 39%, while the “unlikely” answer grew from 53% to 61%.
We asked this question because some market estimates take for granted that current relative gasoline and electricity costs will prevail in the future. That seems highly unlikely, given that even current modest estimates say that electric output will have to be expanded by anywhere from 20% to 50% to power an all-EV car fleet.
Ever since early 2008, when President Barack Obama announced that “under my plan … electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket,” the price per kilowatt-hour in U.S. cities has increased by over 40%, despite essentially no growth in total energy use.
That’s about to change, due largely to “net-zero” and other changes in our energy economy. Even without an all-EV car fleet, current estimates see growth of about 29% in electricity use from 2021 to 2050.
With utilities responding to strict new federal rules by closing lower-cost coal- and gas-fired power plants and mothballing nuclear facilities in favor of far pricier alternatives such as wind and solar, the price of electricity for electrical vehicles has nowhere to go but up.
In short, if nothing changes, the so-called EV revolution could be short-lived, barring an endless flood of government subsidies to keep it going.
Finally, we asked whether current plans by several states “to ban gasoline-powered car sales in 12 years” was a “good idea,” a “bad idea,” or “not sure.”
By nearly 2-1, 54% to 28%, Americans thought it was a bad idea. And another 18% said they’re “not sure.”
Republicans (13% “good idea,” 76% “bad idea”) and independents (19% good and 62% bad) really disliked the bans. But even Democrats achieved only a plurality, not a majority, with 43% saying it was a good idea, 36% saying it was a bad idea and 21% not sure.
The point is, those who wish to push Americans toward a new energy future might have to ease up a little, or face eventual blowback from voters. It’s a simple fact: We don’t currently produce enough energy for a massive switch to electrical vehicles, as now envisioned.
Current plans by the Biden administration to crack down on utilities after years of demonizing fossil fuels have left the U.S. with little spare capacity. Indeed, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, an industry-wide group, already warns of an “elevated risk” of blackouts this summer. Other groups are also sounding alarms.
“Demand for cooling and the performance of wind and solar resources will be key factors in the grid’s performance,” the group said. “The situation has been exacerbated by demand growth and the retirement of coal and nuclear power plants.”
Meanwhile, the Environmental Protection Agency “has proposed emissions rules that would effectively require automakers to sell mostly EVs,” warns a recent piece in City Journal, even though “no one really knows how much widespread adoption of EVs could reduce emissions, or whether they might even increase them.”
Indeed, some estimates say EVs in many instances will produce more CO2 than conventional cars.
Americans, it seems, aren’t keen on owning EVs. At least not yet. As MoneyWise, a personal financial website, observed: “Americans aren’t lining up to buy EVs — despite the new $7,500 Inflation Reduction Act tax credit.”
Recent market surveys show just 4% of new car sales are currently EVs, despite President Joe Biden’s executive order to make half of all car sales EVs by 2030. That’s just seven years away.
Even in Britain, which is moving along the same track as the Biden administration, there are recent warnings of slack demand for EVs.
Few people, it seems, think the added expense and trouble of purchasing special charging equipment, having lengthy charging sessions of 10 hours or more and not being able to drive into a gas station and say “fill ‘er up” is worth the trouble of an EV.
I&I/TIPP publishes timely, unique, and informative data each month on topics of public interest. TIPP’s reputation for polling excellence comes from being the most accurate pollster for the past five presidential elections.
Terry Jones is an editor of Issues & Insights. His four decades of journalism experience include serving as national issues editor, economics editor, and editorial page editor for Investor’s Business Daily.
Absolutely not! The whole thing is a scam!
President Biden may have mandated a death spiral for the auto industry. Biden’s passion for electric vehicles to help achieve lower emissions in wealthy countries seems to be oblivious to the potentially insurmountable and uncontrollable challenges facing the automobile industry. Biden may achieve lower emissions, but the casualty list is growing, along with inflationary challenges to those that can least afford more expenses into their life standard.
https://www.cfact.org/2023/04/20/president-biden-may-have-mandated-a-death-spiral-for-the-auto-industry/
Were Asians surveyed re their attitude towards EVs? What government mandate were there 120+ years ago to mandate horseless carriages or did the transition away from horses happen naturally?
The transition from horses to cars happened naturally, HOWEVER, that is a bad comparison.
A more apt comparison would be that the government did not mandate cars, but mandated a new breed of horse that everyone was required purchase. The new horses were more expensive. They could not go as far before having to rest for an hour or more. You could not feed them the standard feed or what was available along your trip, but you would have to buy your feed from a government controlled “utility”. While you did not have to have as many vet visits, your horse would eventually require major surgery that was worth more than the value of said horse.
The upside is the horse did not poop as much.
Try forcing that on people in the 1800s, you would have been run out of town on a rail.
I live in rural NC. Every three months I travel to Maryland for work and twice a year I have to travel for personal reasons. Each trip my V8 truck takes about 7 hours. With an EV i would have to charge along the way and extend my trip by hours. I usually do one fuel pee stop and it takes 10 minutes. Charge would be another hour or two.
The more of these polls I see, the more convinced I become that Demorats are mentally ill.
The numbers for those refusing these POS vehicles should be much higher. This, to me is worrisome.
Personally, I know of not one person who wants one. Not one. I wonder how many people that say they would get one are really aware of what they would be getting into.
Of course, it should not surprise me. Whether there was voting irregularities or not, a good percentage of this country voted for the moron in office, and most of them still believe he is doing a good job.
Just curious what your experience is with EVs? I have a Tesla Model S and it is hands down the best car I have ever had. My previous car was a Lexus LS, top of the line luxury, and my Tesla is better in every way. More comfortable, way faster, better ride, quieter, literally drives itself, hyper efficient (220 mile trip costs $7 in electricity), better technology, more fun, etc. I mean no offence, but I think your judgement has been clouded by politics instead of looking at the products themselves. Also, the Tesla’s sold in the USA are the MOST American cars made. Oh, and the safest.
I am glad you like your car. Let the free market decide, without subsidy. Without picking my pocket.
I drove the model 3, which was a pile of junk. Idiotic touch screen for everything. It was smooth, pulled fine, but had lousy range. Tired of hearing about how great the range is.
I know it is not the same as a model S.
My good friend is a doctor, and both he and his wife have model S’s. He is always ranting about how great they are, and how great it is not to have to “deal with fumes”, as if that is some horrific issue. He laughed that a voice came on from Tesla telling him he had to slow down until he put air in his tire, as it would not be covered by warranty if he continued at this speed and the tire failed. He and his wife thought that was “cute”.
He is loaded, so of course, he can afford 2. However, he has a new BMW as well. I asked him why, and he said that was for when he goes to his satellite offices or on trips. Nice to be loaded.
You state how cheap the electricity is. Our gas is expensive now because of our government. Wait until the government jacks up electricity rates. You won’t be crowing. If gas were at $2.50 a gallon, as it should be, I would be paying $13.75 to go those miles. Big deal, I’d pay that, and for YEARS my fuel costs would not be more than the difference you paid for your “fun” car. I’ll happily pay the difference in fuel at the rate it is now, for not having to worry about getting a charge, cold weather, or anything else. Truth is, I can drive as far as I want, across the country any time I wish with not a worry in the world–stopping only a few minutes at a myriad of wide open fueling stations– and you cannot.
And yes, the Model 3 is junk.
No, actually more “living” people voted for Trump than Biden….it was the “dead” people and fake ballots that placed O’Biden in the WH…
I don’t disagree with you, but regardless of fraud, a disgusting amount of people DID vote for that walking corpse.
I don’t like being coerced. I’ll drive a gas guzzler or I’ll walk. They can shove EVs.
Let me be clear, I am no fan of mandates.
Mr. Jones, I appreciate your attempts and a fair-minded article, but you have some factual inaccuracies and promote some FUD(fear, uncertainty, and doubt) talking points without including accurate and appropriate refutations. For example, the cost of solar power has dropped below the cost of coal and continues to decline. https://news.yahoo.com/solar-energy-now-cheaper-coal-123600665.html
Additionally, stationary battery storage systems like Tesla Megapack 2 are much cheaper to install and operate compared with Peaker plants and will lower the overall energy costs. Battery costs are dropping along a predictable cost curve and still have room to drop. https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/04/12/battery-storage-systems-30-cheaper-than-rival-gas-peaker-plants-for-firming-renewables/
Also, the bit about electric cars creating more CO2 needs more context. The break even period after manufacture is just a few years and the EV will last much longer than that. Plus, when the battery pack is no longer suitable for a car, it can be converted to a stationary battery for a building or recycled and virtually all the materials recaptured.
Oh please, stop with the Tesla talking points. It’s like you guys are some sort of cult.
Like solar panels, if they really were that awesome, if they REALLY saved you net cash, EVERYONE would have one. EVERY house. EVERY building. But no, there is always a catch, and that is why the government coerces and rewards people to get them.
Same as electric cars.
And you freaking know it.
So we can save the environment and get rid of fossil fuels by driving
electric cars, right?
Read this.
SUBJECT: BATTERIES
Tesla said it best when they called it an Energy Storage System. That’s important.They do not make electricity– they store electricity produced elsewhere, primarily by coal, uranium, natural gas-powered plants, diesel-fueled generators or minerals. So, to say an Electric Vehicle (EV) is a zero-emission vehicle is not at all valid.
Also, since twenty percent of the electricity generated in the U.S. is from coal-fire plants, it follows that forty percent of the EVs on the road are coal-powered, do you see? If not, read on.
Einstein’s formula, E=MC2, tells us it takes the same amount of energy to move a five-thousand-pound gasoline-driven automobile a mile as it does an electric one. The only question again is what produces the power? To reiterate, it does not come from the battery; the battery is only the storage device, like a gas tank in a car.
There are two orders of batteries, rechargeable, and single-use. The most common single-use batteries are A, AA, AAA, C, D. 9V, and lantern types. Those dry-cell species use zinc, manganese, lithium, silver oxide, or zinc. Rechargeable batteries only differ in their internal materials, usually lithium-ion, nickel-metal oxide, and nickel-cadmium. The United States uses three billion of these two
battery types a year, and most are not recycled; they end up in landfills. California is the only state which requires all batteries be recycled. If you throw your small, used batteries in the trash,
here is what happens to them.
All batteries are self-discharging. That means even when not in use, they leak tiny amounts of energy. You have likely ruined a flashlight or two from an old, ruptured battery. When a battery runs down and can no longer power a toy or light, you think of it as dead; well, it is not. It continues to leak small amounts of electricity.
As the chemicals inside it run out, pressure builds inside the battery’s metal casing, and eventually, it cracks. The metals left inside then ooze out. The ooze in your ruined flashlight is toxic, and so is the ooze that will inevitably leak from every battery in a landfill. All batteries eventually rupture; it just takes
rechargeable batteries longer to end up in the landfill.
In addition to dry cell batteries, there are also wet cell ones used in automobiles, boats, and motorcycles. The good thing about those is, ninety percent of them are recycled. Unfortunately, we do
not yet know how to recycle single-use ones properly.
But that is not half of it. For those of you excited about electric cars and the green revolution look at batteries and also windmills and solar panels. These three technologies share what we call environmentally destructive embedded costs.
Everything manufactured has two costs associated with it, embedded costs and operating costs. I will explain embedded costs using a can of baked beans as my subject. In this scenario, baked beans are on sale, so you jump in your car and head for the grocery store. Sure enough, there they are on the shelf for $1.75 a can. As you head to the checkout, you begin to think about the embedded costs in the can of beans.
The first cost is the diesel fuel the farmer used to plow the field, till the ground, harvest the beans, and transport them to the food processor. Not only is his diesel fuel an embedded cost, so are the costs to build the tractors, combines, and trucks. In addition, the farmer might use a nitrogen fertilizer made from natural gas.
Next is the energy costs of cooking the beans, heating the building, transporting the workers, and paying for the vast amounts of electricity used to run the plant. The steel can holding the beansis also an embedded cost. Making the steel can requires mining taconite, shipping it by boat, extracting the iron, placing it in a coal-fired blast furnace, and adding carbon. Then it’s back on another truck to take the beans to the grocery store. Finally, add in the cost of the gasoline for your car.
A typical EV battery weighs one thousand pounds, about the size of a travel trunk. It contains twenty-five pounds of lithium, sixty pounds of nickel, 44 pounds of manganese, 30 pounds cobalt, 200
pounds of copper, and 400 pounds of aluminum, steel, and plastic. Inside are over 6,000 individual lithium-ion cells.
It should concern you that all those toxic components come from mining. For instance, to manufacture each EV auto battery, you must process 25,000 pounds of brine for the lithium, 30,000 pounds of orefor the cobalt, 5,000 pounds of ore for the nickel, and 25,000 pounds of ore for copper. All told, you dig up 500,000 pounds of the earth’s crust for just one battery.”
Sixty-eight percent of the world’s cobalt, a significant part of a battery, comes from the Congo. Their mines have no pollution controls, and they employ children who die from handling this toxic material. Should we factor in these diseased kids as part of the cost of driving an electric car?” And the Chinese just bought most of these mines!
California is building the largest battery in the world near San Francisco, and they intendto power it from solar panels and windmills. They claim this is the ultimate in being ‘green,’ but it is not! This construction project is creating an environmental disaster.
The main problem with solar arrays is the chemicals needed to process silicate into the silicon used in the panels. To make pure enough silicon requires processing it with hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid, nitric acid, hydrogen fluoride, trichloroethane, and acetone. In addition, they also need gallium, arsenide, copper-indium-gallium-diselenide, and cadmium-telluride, which also are highly toxic. Silicone dust is a hazard to the workers, and the panels cannot be recycled.
Windmills are the ultimate in embedded costs and environmental destruction. Each weighs 1688 tons (the equivalent of 23 houses) and contains 1300 tons of concrete, 295 tons of steel, 48 tons of iron,
24 tons of fiberglass, and the hard to extract rare earths neodymium, praseodymium, and dysprosium. Each blade weighs 81,000 pounds and will last 15 to 20 years, at which time it must be replaced. We cannot recycle used blades. Sadly, both solar arrays and windmills kill birds, bats, sea life, and migratory insects.
There may be a place for these technologies, but you must look beyond the myth of zero emissions. I predict EVs and windmills will be abandoned once the embedded environmental costs of making and
replacing them become apparent. “Going Green” may sound like the Utopian ideal and are easily espoused, catchy buzzwords, but when you look at the hidden and embedded costs realistically with an open mind, you can see that Going Green is more destructive to the Earth’s environment than meets the eye, for sure.
EVs cause more pollution than they save.
Make all them in Washington, D.C.(District of Crooks)and the UN(Useless Nation)walk or take Gretas little sailboat Made from fossil Fuels
Any salesman knows the best products sell themselves. The White House is working way too hard to convince Americans that EVs are good for us. They are not telling us about all the advantages EVs have over ICEs. And they are definitely not telling us about the disadvantages of EVs over ICEs. AND… has Joe issued an executive order requiring all government employees (including senators and representatives) that they must set the example and drive EVs? And how about Joe… has he purchased an EV, or converted The Beast to electric? Sounds like another politician taking the position of “Good for thee, but not for me!”