A group consisting of thousands of American car dealers wrote to President Biden last year imploring him to stop trying to push buyers into electric cars – and even more followed it up last month with a new letter. The demand just isn’t there, they claimed. Unsold EVs were “piling up” on their lots. And more recently Ford was forced to cut production of both its F-150 Lightning electric truck and Mustang Mach-E crossover to suit more modest sales expectations.
But a new study claims that Americans are very interested in picking an EV or hybrid for their next car. Data from GBK Collective polled 2,000 people living in the U.S. and learned that more than half were considering a car with some kind of electrical assistance for their next wheels.
These buyers, though, are very different to the first wave of buyers who jumped on the EV trend, the report’s authors say. They are less driven by a passion for design and innovation, and more concerned with practical matters like the cost of ownership and when and where they might have to plug their new car into the mains, and how much that might cost.
Related: Auto Industry Fears The Worst As Demand For EVs Fails To Meet Expectations
And that’s not the only cost consideration that’s important to them. The study learned that this new potential customer group only had a median budget of $50,000 for their next vehicle, whereas current EV owners were shopping with a $59,000 kitty. In a bit of good news for automakers, those polled did say they were willing to pay a premium for an electrified car, suggesting $7,650 more for an EV compared with a combustion car, though again, existing EV owners are willing to dig deeper. The study found they’d pay a $10k premium.
The more conservative nature of the new buyers also means they naturally gravitate towards brands they know and trust rather then newer marques, ranking Toyota as the most-considered EV brand and Tesla third, Business Insider reports. The fact that Toyota is still pushing the hybrid angle, rather than jumping all-in on EVs as some other legacy brands are now doing, also strikes a chord with these new buyers, GBK Collective found.