Photo: Chevrolet, modified
It's information like this that makes you wonder whether these people know the World War II is over or if they know who their president is. Well, given there's one president in the office and an elected one waiting to take his place, that could go down as a trick question.
For you and I - and everyone who has read an automotive website at least once in the past two or three years - it's almost impossible to imagine that more than half the people living in the U.S.A. don't know they have the option to buy an electric vehicle.
But if you step back and look at how the average Joe gets his information - mainstream media, TV - then it all starts to make sense. The carmakers are spending close to nothing on EV advertising, and when they do invest in it, it's in the states with ZEV mandates.
According to a recent survey conducted by Altman Vilandrie & Co, 60 percent of Americans are "unaware of electric cars," while 80 percent have never driven or ridden in one. That's because very few brands actually offer an EV model, and when they do, it's very likely that dealerships don't have one available for test drives.
Sales persons also don't have any reason to talk to their customers about the electric options mostly because they are more expensive than their conventionally-powered counterparts, without offering any advantage.
So while it's easy to point fingers at the public and say it's uninformed, it's mostly the manufacturers' fault for not making EVs worth buying. Then there is Tesla, which doesn't advertise by default and has very prohibitive prices. The Chevy Bolt and Tesla Model 3 promise to herald a new era of EVs, but one is yet to launch and the other hasn't passed the test of time yet.
The ironic part is that almost everybody who has ever driven an electric car would describe the experience in a positive manner, meaning the only things holding back EV adoption are awareness, the price tag, and that pesky range anxiety that simply refuses to go away despite larger batteries and more widely spread infrastructure.
The survey, as reported by NGT News, was carried out on 2,500 respondents, 250 of which said they plan to buy an EV for their next car. However, only three percent of them already owned a battery-powered vehicle, which shows there is still a long way to go.
But if you step back and look at how the average Joe gets his information - mainstream media, TV - then it all starts to make sense. The carmakers are spending close to nothing on EV advertising, and when they do invest in it, it's in the states with ZEV mandates.
According to a recent survey conducted by Altman Vilandrie & Co, 60 percent of Americans are "unaware of electric cars," while 80 percent have never driven or ridden in one. That's because very few brands actually offer an EV model, and when they do, it's very likely that dealerships don't have one available for test drives.
Sales persons also don't have any reason to talk to their customers about the electric options mostly because they are more expensive than their conventionally-powered counterparts, without offering any advantage.
So while it's easy to point fingers at the public and say it's uninformed, it's mostly the manufacturers' fault for not making EVs worth buying. Then there is Tesla, which doesn't advertise by default and has very prohibitive prices. The Chevy Bolt and Tesla Model 3 promise to herald a new era of EVs, but one is yet to launch and the other hasn't passed the test of time yet.
The ironic part is that almost everybody who has ever driven an electric car would describe the experience in a positive manner, meaning the only things holding back EV adoption are awareness, the price tag, and that pesky range anxiety that simply refuses to go away despite larger batteries and more widely spread infrastructure.
The survey, as reported by NGT News, was carried out on 2,500 respondents, 250 of which said they plan to buy an EV for their next car. However, only three percent of them already owned a battery-powered vehicle, which shows there is still a long way to go.
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