Featured Toyota chief speaks out on EVs

Global Plug-In Car Sales November 2020: Huge New Record 400,000+

In November plug-in sales were 5.9% of the global market. Its hard to believe in 10 years it won't be much higher.

 

Another of the many "Tesla Killers" brought to you by "Big Auto"

Mike

 

Source: Survey Reveals Electric Car Owners Almost Never Go Back To Gas

Regardless of anything negative you read about EVs, once you own one, it's likely you'll never go back to gas.

Zap-Map conducted a survey of UK-based electric vehicle (EV) owners. While the results aren't surprising to EV fans, they need to be shared with the world to help promote EV adoption. According to the survey, fewer than 1 percent of EV drivers want to return to a gas-powered car. Moreover, Zap-Map's data suggests that over 90 percent of EV owners won't be replacing their EV with a gas car.

While there's a lot to be said about the validity of surveys, how they're conducted, where they're conducted, etc., we believe most EV owners across the globe will likely agree with this data. It seems very rare for electric car owners to get rid of their new prize and go back to gas, though it certainly does happen for various reasons.
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Perhaps @Lee Jay might see this as his terror.

Bob Wilson

 

IN essence, this poll was likely to suffer from the self nominating nature of using early adopters for focus groups. You had to be pretty devoted to the technology or to the environment to buy the early EVs. Rumors of fires and $10,000 batteries that die in 2 years abounded. People who took the risk back then are unlikely to want to return to a plain ICE.

I can't speak for the world, but I live in an area with abnormally high numbers of clean air automobiles. We are a suburb of Silicon Valley and thus have a lot of early adopters. It's not uncommon to pull up to a stoplight and find myself surrounded by a mixture of BEV, PHEV, hybrid and home built cars. I can look down the street from my front lawn and see half a dozen EVs of one kind or another.

What I have observed is that you have early adopters who are really committed to the environment, but you also have a large number that are driving an EV for the free incentives. Once the incentives go away, so does the interest in the car. I don't see any more LEAFs on the block, nor VOLTs. The only C-MAX was replaced by a Prius Prime. More hybrids of various makes were showing up before Covid struck. I can't remember all the makes. There have not been many new cars on the block this year.

If the poll were changed to exclude the early adopters it will be a bit different, but probably would still show a marked preference for EVs over ICE.

Dan

 

Disney started leasing EV's back in the 1990s. (a fleet of Chevy S10 EV's that were virtually the same platform as the ev1 - many were sold off to the public unlike the ev1) The Gearheads here at work refused to drive them. I enjoyed them a lot. That was over two decades ago now. Sincere curiosity, how much longer do users have to be called early adopters.
.

 

If I recall correctly, our marketing team defined early adopter as that group who will buy into a new concept even though the general public sees no value in it. They are often willing to pay a premium for technology that is not generally known or desired by most people. They are often recruited as advocates to help move a technology to mainstream. They do this by proving the naysayers wrong, vocally.

In general:

If you park it in the driveway and your neighbor has to ask "What is that???" , you may be an early adopter.

If you have to explain to your parents why your new toy is better than your old toy, you may be an early adopter.

If your wife protests that doesn't want a new one because she's still learning how to use the old one, you may be an early adopter.

If the government is willing to pay you by rebate or credit to buy a new toy and you buy it, you may be an early adopter.

Dan

 

Wisconsin bought all the used Volts, my small rural city has over a dozen Volts alongside a dozen G1 Insights

I didn’t see another Volt here before 2017 and they are now all 1st gens

oddly leafs were initially more common than volts and have disappeared since new taxes were formed, the last non-Tesla disappeared from the work parking lot 2 years ago and oddly there is only one Tesla left at work, (there were 3x) used ones initially. Though I do occasionally see a Tesla while driving the excitement for BEV around here is gone though you see plenty of old PHEVs driving around everyday. If Festival Foods supercharger is an indication Tesla traffic at that installation casually has gone to zero Tesla’s charging the last couple years whil early on I always seemed to see at least one car parked there when I went early on.

Another oddity although I never kept a close eye the number of PRII in the lot has gone to zero in our local massive parking lot and I do remember seeing them often even a few years ago, my guess is they like the hybrid tax as much as I do. If I didn’t know better the number of PRII Isee tooling around at SAMs and Wallland seems to have decreased as well but I still see specific Gen 1’s almost every time I go out (some are registration exempt I guess by this point)

ah well