Next car may be electric, about 4 in 10 people say in poll
Next car may be electric, about 4 in 10 people say in poll
About 40% of Americans say they are at least somewhat likely to go electric the next time they buy a car. That’s according to a new poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the University of Chicago.
It also finds that the main barrier for most people to buying an electric vehicle is the sticker price. But driving an electric car is cheaper than driving a gas car.
And Sam Ori at the University of Chicago’s Energy Policy Institute said that is a big motivator.
“Seventy-four percent of Americans say that saving money on gas is the top reason why they would consider purchasing an electric vehicle,” he said. Saving the climate is also a big motivator, but not as big as saving money.
“At the same time, it’s not just about the operating costs, there’s also the upfront costs,” Ori added. “And we know that electric vehicles tend to be a few thousand dollars more than their comparable gasoline vehicle.” And that is the top deterrent for potential buyers.
The federal government has been trying to make the sticker price less of a deterrent by offering tax credits on certain EVs.
“Right now, that’s $7,500,” according to Leah Stokes at University of California, Santa Barbara. “But by next week, April 18, it’s going to probably be going down for most electric vehicles to about half of that.”
Stokes said that’s because of new requirements for where EVs and their batteries are made.
“So, a lot of the EVs are not going to qualify for that full tax credit quite yet because they don’t make all the battery components here in the United States,” she said.
That should change as more carmakers open EV and battery plants in the United States, said Gil Tal at the Electric Vehicle Research Center at University of California, Davis.
“The idea is that this kind of requirement will change where the car companies decide to build their next factory,” he said.
What will really drive down the cost of EVs more than tax credits is more supply, said Sam Fiorani at AutoForecast Solutions.
“It’s just going to take a while. We’ve been building internal combustion engines for 140 years,” he said. “And so we’ve only been building modern electric vehicles for 20.”
He said carmakers just aren’t able to churn out nearly as many EVs as they can gas-powered cars.
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