Unsurprisingly, Online Searches For New/Used EVs More Than Double In 2 Weeks Post-Invasion
There’s a war going on in Europe. Gas prices are sky-high. What’s an American to do? Well, search for electric vehicles, apparently. According to Cars.com, online searches for new and used electric vehicles more than doubled in the roughly two-week period following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
That’s around the same time President Biden announced the U.S. would ban oil and gas imports from Russia, which produces a significant chunk of the world’s fossil fuels. As a result, gas prices across the U.S. have risen sharply, reaching an average of more than $4.30 a gallon, as of last week. “When gas prices spike, searches immediately go toward more efficient vehicles,” Joe Wiesenfelder, executive editor at Cars.com, told E&E news.
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Even before the Russia-Ukraine conflict, electric vehicles were having something of a moment. Last summer, the “Big Three” American carmakers — Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis (the Dutch company that owns Chrysler) — announced it would aim for 40 to 50 percent of their new vehicle sales to be electric by 2030. Biden himself campaigned on the oft-repeated promise of 500,000 EV charging stations and announced plans for all federal vehicles to eventually go electric.
But despite those lofty goals, the path to widespread EV adoption has been surprisingly bumpy. EVs make up less than 1 percent of the country’s 250 million cars, trucks, and vans and only about 3 percent of new vehicle sales. One reason for the slow adoption may be cost: Although EVs are cheaper to drive, they are more expensive to buy upfront. That’s even true when you look at used vehicles. Over 70 percent of pre-owned EVs cost over $25,000. (The average price of a brand-new gas-powered vehicle in 2021 was just around $40,000.)
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https://grist.org/transportation/high-gas-prices-have-a-lot-more-people-searching-for-electric-vehicles/
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