For a long time, it seemed like general wisdom held that electric vehicle owners should also keep a vehicle powered by an internal combustion engine, just in case. But a new survey suggests that people who do own the two types of vehicles don’t really need both.
Zap-Map, a U.K.-based EV charging station mapping service, asked 4,300 EV drivers about their driving behavior. It found that, among those who had both an EV and an ICE vehicle, the battery-powered vehicle was used for the majority of trips.
“Our survey has shown for several years now that once you go electric, you don’t go back,” said Melanie Shufflebotham, Zap-Map’s COO. “This year we’ve gone further to show that drivers who haven’t quite let their conventional car go yet still choose to drive their electric.”
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This was especially true for shorter trips, as you might expect. Among the 1,300 people surveyed who owned both an EV and an ICE vehicle, 71 percent chose electric propulsion for a green daily commute. When it came to drives to do the shopping, to go out to a restaurant, and to do the school run, they used the EV 85 percent of the time.
That, of course, makes sense, since those drives tend to be well within the range restrictions of the majority of electric vehicles, and so require no special planning. Even on longer trips, though, owners still preferred their EVs.
Zap-Map found that these drivers take the electric vehicles on journeys of 100 miles or more 67 percent of the time. Even more surprisingly, drivers with access to both an EV or an ICE vehicle opted for the electric one the majority of the time (55 percent) when they were embarking on a long, cross-country trip, that would require them to use public chargers.
The survey results are “an endorsement for EVs that even when the option is open to take the fossil fuel car, drivers are very happy to stick with electric,” said Shufflebotham. “Anyone who still on the fence about going electric, perhaps not sure if 2023 is the year to do so just yet, this should be clear evidence that it’s time to take the plunge!”
