Study Finds Americans Would Like to Buy EVs, Few Plan To

An avalanche of studies conducted in the past few years in more than one automotive market has flooded the public awareness, trying to shape, through their findings, the auto world of tomorrow. Most of them, however, have only managed to add to the uncertainty, as no study seems to confirm any of the others.

While some, most, point to the fact that EVs will only catch on if a catastrophe like the unstoppable rising of the gas prices were to hit the planet, other, the minority, are trying to announce that people like and will probably will buy electric vehicles in the near future.

The study we will talk about here, conducted by independent research company for utilities E Source, has found that the truth, or at least E Source's truth, lies somewhere in between the two categories described above.

The study, conducted on an undisclosed number of subjects (a minor detail which kind of dents the findings), has found that 85 percent of US consumers are determined to buy an EV, but only three percent of them right away. 57 percent will only go for an EV when the current car they drive is in need of replacement, while the rest of the batch, 25 percent, will only buy one when EVs become mainstream.

"We are seeing a substantial willingness for drivers to move to plug-in electric vehicles, but only if the manufacturers can provide the easy extended range of travel that Americans are used to," says Bill LeBlanc, senior advisor at E Source.