The greatest barrier to EV adoption? Lack of familiarity
Once drivers get behind the wheel of an EV, worries about range anxiety, costs, and charging notably drop, a new Plug In America study finds.
Plug In America, a US nonprofit that advocates for widespread EV adoption, teamed up with EPRI, a nonprofit R&D organization, to release the latest insights into how EV drivers feel about their cars in its “2024 EV Driver Annual Survey Report.”
One of the biggest takeaways is how drivers’ worries decrease with EV adoption. Before making the switch, many people fret about battery range, charging infrastructure, and overall costs. But the data shows that once they start driving electric, these concerns drop significantly.
“It’s great to have data show what we’ve heard from EV owners for years,” said Joel Levin, Plug In America’s executive director. “What seem like scary issues for some people considering an EV become non-issues after going electric.”
However, concerns about the reliability of public charging and the impact of weather on EV performance still remained for EV drivers. The number of drivers worried about charging access after switching to EVs dropped, but the dip is slight. Fortunately, the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act are pouring in funding to address these exact pain points.
Overall, the EV drivers surveyed were overwhelmingly positive about their vehicles. A whopping 89% say they’re “likely” or “very likely” to make their next car electric, with even stronger support from those 65 and over and Tesla drivers, which sees over 90% saying they’ll stick with EVs.
The “2024 EV Driver Annual Survey Report” is based on responses from over 4,200 people from January through March 2024, including more than 3,300 current EV drivers. Even among those who don’t own an EV yet, 77% of people surveyed that are considering a new vehicle in the next year are eyeing an EV or plug-in hybrid.
Financial backing for Plugin America’s survey came from EPRI, Xcel Energy, and the Alliance for Transportation Electrification. You can access the survey here.
Electrek’s Take
This stat may come up since it differs from the Plug In America report, so I want to reference the recent McKinsey “2024 Mobility Consumer Pulse” survey. It found that 46% of US EV drivers said they are likely to switch back to gas-powered vehicles. While the McKinsey report covers a wide range of data on EV drivers, media outlets have mainly focused on this particular statistic, which highlights ongoing concerns about EV ownership.
A big reason the McKinsey respondents cited was the public EV charging experience, and the Plugin America report confirmed that. Plus, both reports found that a lack of familiarity with EVs is the biggest barrier to switching to electric.
The Plug In America report focuses on data from Q1 2024, while the McKinsey report draws from over 30,000 EV and gas car owners across 15 countries, covering data collected since 2021. In those three years, the landscape has shifted significantly. McKinsey’s findings show that global interest in purchasing EVs has steadily increased during that time, reflecting the growing momentum behind electric vehicles despite ongoing challenges.
While it’s useful to compare the two reports, they aren’t directly comparable because the datasets are fundamentally different. The differences in time frame, scope, and participant pools mean the findings offer distinct perspectives rather than being an exact match.
Read more: Here’s how much money you’ll get with the Inflation Reduction Act
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If you’ve ever wondered what happens when you combine a fruit cart, a cargo bike, and a Piaggio Ape all in one vehicle, now you’ve got your answer. I submit, for your approval, this week’s feature for the Awesomely Weird Alibaba Electric Vehicle of the Week column – and it’s a beautiful doozie.
Feast your eyes on this salad slinging, coleslaw cruising, tuber taxiing produce chariot!
I think this electric vegetable trike might finally scratch the itch long felt by many of my readers. It seems every time I cover an electric trike, even the really cool ones, I always get commenters poo-poo-ing it for having two wheels in the rear instead of two wheels in the front. Well, here you go, folks!
Designed with two front wheels for maximum stability, this trike keeps your cucumbers in check through every corner. Because trust me, you don’t want to hit a pothole and suddenly be juggling peaches like you’re in Cirque du Soleil: Farmers Market Edition.
To avoid the extra cost of designing a linked steering system for a pair of front wheels, the engineers who brought this salad shuttle to life simply side-stepped that complexity altogether by steering the entire fixed front end. I’ve got articulating electric tractors that steer like this, and so if it works for a several-ton work machine, it should work for a couple hundred pounds of cargo bike.
Featuring a giant cargo bed up front with four cascading fruit baskets set up for roadside sales, this cargo bike is something of a blank slate. Sure, you could monetize grandma’s vegetable garden, or you could fill it with your own ideas and concoctions. Our exceedingly talented graphics wizard sees it as the perfect coffee and pastry e-bike for my new startup, The Handlebarista, and I’m not one to argue. Basically, the sky is the limit with a blank slate bike like this!
Sure, the quality doesn’t quite match something like a fancy Tern cargo bike. The rim brakes aren’t exactly confidence-inspiring, but at least there are three of them. And if they should all give out, or just not quite slow you down enough to avoid that quickly approaching brick wall, then at least you’ve got a couple hundred pounds of tomatoes as a tasty crumple zone.
The electrical system does seem a bit underpowered. With a 36V battery and a 250W motor, I don’t know if one-third of a horsepower is enough to haul a full load to the local farmer’s market. But I guess if the weight is a bit much for the little motor, you could always do some snacking along the way. On the other hand, all the pictures seem to show a non-electric version. So if this cart is presumably mobile on pedal power alone, then that extra motor assist, however small, is going to feel like a very welcome guest.
The $950 price is presumably for the electric version, since that’s what’s in the title of the listing, though I wouldn’t get too excited just yet. I’ve bought a LOT of stuff on Alibaba, including many electric vehicles, and the too-good-to-be-true price is always exactly that. In my experience, you can multiply the Alibaba price by 3-4x to get the actual landed price for things like these. Even so, $3,000-$4,000 wouldn’t be a terrible price, considering a lot of electric trikes stateside already cost that much and don’t even come with a quad-set of vegetable baskets on board!
I should also put my normal caveat in here about not actually buying one of these. Please, please don’t try to buy one of these awesome cargo e-trikes. This is a silly, tongue-in-cheek weekend column where I scour the ever-entertaining underbelly of China’s massive e-commerce site Alibaba in search of fun, quirky, and just plain awesomely weird electric vehicles. While I’ve successfully bought several fun things on the platform, I’ve also gotten scammed more than once, so this is not for the timid or the tight-budgeted among us.
That isn’t to say that some of my more stubborn readers haven’t followed in my footsteps before, ignoring my advice and setting out on their own wild journey. But please don’t be the one who risks it all and gets nothing in return. Don’t say I didn’t warn you; this is the warning.
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Environment
Podcast: Trump/GOP go after EV/solar, Tesla, Ford, GM EV sales, Electrek Formula Sun, and more
In the Electrek Podcast, we discuss the most popular news in the world of sustainable transport and energy. In this week’s episode, we discuss Trump’s Big Beautiful bill becoming law and going after EVs and solar, Tesla, Ford, and GM EV sales, Electrek Formula Sun, and more
Today’s episode is brought to you by Bosch Mobility Aftermarket—A global leader and trusted provider of automotive aftermarket parts. To celebrate Amazon Prime Day July 8th through 11th, Bosch Mobility is offering exclusive savings on must-have auto parts and tools. Learn more here.
The show is live every Friday at 4 p.m. ET on Electrek’s YouTube channel.
As a reminder, we’ll have an accompanying post, like this one, on the site with an embedded link to the live stream. Head to the YouTube channel to get your questions and comments in.
After the show ends at around 5 p.m. ET, the video will be archived on YouTube and the audio on all your favorite podcast apps:
We now have a Patreon if you want to help us avoid more ads and invest more in our content. We have some awesome gifts for our Patreons and more coming.
Here are a few of the articles that we will discuss during the podcast:
- Electrek FSGP 2025: New teams, new cars, same solar spirit
- Congress votes to send 2 million US jobs to China, increase deficit, energy costs
- Tesla (TSLA) confirms 384,000 deliveries in Q2 2025, right on expectations
- Tesla prototype sparks speculation: a Model Y, maybe slightly smaller
- Tesla launches Oasis Supercharger with solar farm and off-grid batteries
- Tesla unveils its LFP battery factory, claims it’s almost ready
- Here’s why Ford’s electric vehicle sales crashed by nearly a third in Q2
- The Chevy Equinox EV is GM’s breakout star, but that’s not the only surprise
- Xpeng launches G7, a new Tesla Model Y competitor for just $27,000
Here’s the live stream for today’s episode starting at 4:00 p.m. ET (or the video after 5 p.m. ET:
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