Featured 1 in 5 Californians have swapped their EV for a gas car — and this is to blame

including the text as a quote sure would be convenient

 

wait until their cats get stolen, buyers remorse

 

But, the report says "Researchers surveyed 1,727 Californians who purchased an EV or plug-in hybrid (PHEV) between 2015 and 2019. 20.1% of PHEV owners and 18.1% of battery-only EVs switched back to gas when the time came to buy a new car." That means more PHEV owners than BEV owners opted to change back to gassers. For them, PHEV was not the best of both worlds.

 

people often change cars when the time comes.

others keep statistics and do polls.

we all know these things can be twisted to conform to whatever q anon theory you may be espousing at the time

a few years ago, it was 'more californians have traded in their prius for a tesla than any other car'

more importantly, how many bev's are registered in cali each year?

how are tesla sales doing?

why aren't used tesla's cheaper?

 

Depends on what PHEV and the fact gas was around $2 a gallon alongside tax and insurance changes.
The Ford PHEVs were very inefficient and the PIP was barely a plug in, add to this the fact that they lost HOV access and we can see reasons why they might drop.

Funny part is another study on the same subject found that 73% of the folks with PHEVs that went “back to gas” would consider a plug in the future

Another study touched on the fact that very few women drive a plug in currently up to 30% of EV drivers but disproportionately women were the ones going back to gas despite their already small portion of EV drivers.

Also many of the back to gas folks owned very limited range first Gen EVs which are now functionally obsolete and nearly valueless.
Without a real value proposition to put up with a short range car nobody is going to keep them while paying the same tax and registration for an extremely limited vehicle.

 

TL ; DR
2 fuel sources > 1

This is pretty much the SAME reason that many people buy dual-fuel generators, especially if they live in what the UN calls 'developing' regions where power disruptions are frequent.

One of the fuels is better, cheaper, cleaner, and the unit will last a heck of a lot longer if you only use that one particular fuel source.

But sometimes?
In the real world?
When you REALLY need it?

Only one fuel is available.

 

There is also other variables, "Researchers surveyed 1,727 Californians who purchased an EV or plug-in hybrid (PHEV) between 2015 and 2019. 20.1% of PHEV owners and 18.1% of battery-only EVs switched back to gas when the time came to buy a new car. And it seems to be primarily down to the issue of charging infrastructure.

According to the findings, the people who ditched EVs were twice as likely to have no charging options at home. They were also half as likely to have a level two charger at home, which is essential if you need to be able to recharge your car overnight." Plus differences between models; 11% for Teslas and 36.9% for the Fiat EV.

Here is the research paper and abstract.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-021-00814-9?utm_medium=affiliate&utm_source=commission_junction&utm_campaign=3_nsn6445_deeplink_PID100046294&utm_content=deeplink
"For the market share of plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) to continue to grow and reach 100% of new vehicle sales, adopters of the technology, who initially buy PEVs, will need to continue choosing them in subsequent purchases. Although much research has focused on the reasons for, and barriers to, initial PEV purchase, less has been devoted to the reasons for discontinuance—abandoning a new technology after first purchasing it. Here, on the basis of results from five questionnaire surveys, we find that PEV discontinuance in California occurs at a rate of 20% for plug-in hybrid electric vehicle owners and 18% for battery electric vehicle owners. We show that discontinuance is related to dissatisfaction with the convenience of charging, having other vehicles in the household that are less efficient, not having level 2 (240-volt) charging at home, having fewer household vehicles and not being male."

Some initial thoughts before I try finding the whole of the paper.

• HOV access is an effective seller in California. We know some PHEV buyers got the car just for that reason, with no intention of charging it. The lack of charging at home points to this being a reason to get the plug in, and now the owner no longer needs the HOV access, or deemed it not worth it by getting a plug in.
• Many employers offer charging, which would allow ownership of a BEV without home charging, but people change jobs, and could lose that access.
• There are few SUV plug in choices. The Soul EV and Outlander PHEV were basically it if you couldn't afford a Model X or European brand during the time period in question. More models started showing up as 2019 model years, but may have been too late for many respondents when it came time to turn in the lease.

That all may have come from this paper.

But why not get a longer range one when replacing it?

 

Even if you're one of the many people that are never able to charge the Prime at home, it's STILL the better Prius to buy.
It's essentially the same car and the tax kickbacks put it more or less in the same price range as a wireless Prius......and if you live where people's idea of being eco-chic is affluent people buying certain cars to drive solo in a "High occupancy Vehicle" lane, then the PP will be even more valuable when it comes time to trade it in.

But....yeah. I've seen people NOT buy PPs because of a lack of some pretty trivial (to me) accessories.

The article linked in the OP dealt with something fundamentally different, which is:
"Poor charging infrastructure hurting EV adoption"

Tom's Guide is a little too 'clingy' for me personally, but they really don't have an ax to grind with the EVangelicals.

For the next few years (10?) it just is what it is.
It took 120 years for petrol stations to become ubiquitous in this country.

 

Nifty

 

Same reason you don’t keep an outdated EV, price.

For an EV to make sense it’s cost per mile has to be low along with insurance and taxes.

If you can use a limited EV for most of your driving you many times gain nothing from a much longer range and do not drive enough to cover fixed unavoidable costs like insurance and taxes.
Let alone the much higher depreciation from having more BEV than you can reasonably use or possibly afford.

Your TCO is driven through the roof

In my case 99% of my driving is only covered once you get to a 600 mile range due to lack of usable charge infrastructure.

But with a meager 35 mile range about 70% of my trips are covered bump that to 200 miles and you maybe move to 80%
This still isn’t a high percentage of my Miles though and given my extremely low fuel costs even $100 kills the value proposition let alone the extra $600+ of the cheapest insurance possible .

Personally I’ve believed car insurance should be illegal and the person should carry liability on themselves.

Whether I own 1 car or a thousand I don’t drive any further. And not that long ago a 2nd car was an extra $80 of insurance

 

Found a PDF of the study.
https://escholarship.org/content/qt11n6f4hs/qt11n6f4hs_noSplash_a18cd013f8739cfa5d4937358fe94414.pdf?t=qs7ss2

Of those that discontinued with the plug in, 28% didn't have home charging. It was 13% for those that continued. The study also looked into many other factors, like number of other household vehicles. It also asked those that didn't get a plug in again, if they would consider so later, and over half said they would.

 

Admittedly, I haven’t read this article in detail yet, but I saw another article with a similar conclusion.

This is exactly the reason I think we should all write to the Biden Administration, in their EV-charging-infrastructure push, to prioritize incentives to install lots and lots of just plain old level-2 chargers in apartment and condominium complexes, and at office buildings. That, over long-range road-tripping “Superchargers.” For the vast majority of EV drivers, road tripping is far more rare than just day-to-day driving.

Side note: What I thought a little surprising, in that other article I read at least, was that it was slightly more common for plug-in hybrid owners to … revert … than pure-electric owners. I’d think that plug-in hybrids would be a best-of-both-worlds scenario and thus less likely.

 

I’ve long argued work places and other places of business should be required to have simple public outlets be they 110vac or around here 277vac on every light pole.
(EVSE should have always required support for 277 since it’s literally everywhere in northern areas)
Considering 30-60 miles can come out of simple 110 on an 8hr plus work day there literally is no need for anything more for 70% of the population and the cost in some cases is zero to the establishment, similar argument could be made for apartments where every room already has a parking stall with an block heater outlet you aren’t allowed to use for charging.
Considering the ma roads folks want EVs to pay hundreds of extra dollars for semis and baseline electricity costs the municipality only 1-5 cents nationwide we could likely include free 110vac on most public areas, up north there are several cities that have antique recessed 110 outlets in their light poles “downtown “


PHEVs can be poorly sorted for certain use cases. (Honestly plain hybrids as well)
The cold weather start up behavior is down right criminal. The guy across the street claims his G2 averages 9mpg on his work trip 2 months a year but due to other driving keeps about a 19mpg overall Winter average 3-4 months a year. Volt is no better in this regard about 2 months of the year.

On my old work commute I had found that whether I drove a Dodge Ram V8 or any automatic econo car my winter FE was 9-12mpg as all the new auto transmission cars have horrifying startup sequences.
While my MT cars I could keep within 20% of normal on the same short trip.

In the real world quadrupling fuel use “because emissions” makes more emissions any way you cut it and costs way more money and should be illegal as grams per mile is likely sky high to make the exhaust percentages in range.

 

"more charging infrastructure" sounds nice but let's be honest: "Total range replenishment in five minutes or less" is the actual killer app here. That's the de facto target to match. Anything less is going to need a lot of marketing grease.

Putting chargers everywhere just gives people one more thing to ignore or get lazy about.

 

Rumour has it next gen Prius will be plug-in on virtually all levels, except a stripped-down base model.

 

In China nio has battery swap stations that take 3 minutes. Tesla tried this in California but it died due to lack of demand and killing of subsidy. If the swap stations aren't subsidized how many Americans will pay $50 to swap in 2 minutes versus $16 to charge in 20 minutes. Hydrogen lobby effectively made sure tesla would not get subsidized for building swap stations and swappable packs (which cost a little more). Who knows maybe nio can bring costs down. I would think this would be most likely with lower priced lithium iron phosphate battery packs (vw and tesla are moving to these in their lower priced offerings) that could be swapped for long trips with longer range packs.

There are a number of factors in the data but the recidivism rate is not that bad. The highest rates of leaving were in phevs, which have fast refueling with gasoline. It has been theorized by some toyota executives that short electric range phevs will not be charged but simply driven like a gasoline car. This seems more likely with a car like the prius phev than the volt or rav4 prime so the problem could take care of itself. The volt is discontinued with gm leaving phevs in favor of bevs, but these volt owners might not like the phevs from other makers.

On the side of bevs leaf's and other short range bevs were much more likely to switch to ice only than long range vehicles (tesla was the only maker during the period). This problem has taken care of itself as even nissan has now embraced the 200+ mile bev. The problem is infrastructure for makes that can't use the tesla charging structure though. The combo plug needs to be expanded in the US, but this situation is better in europe and china with its own standard plug. VW is partially helping build out us infrastructure as part of its dieselgate fiasco.

Plug-ins rapidly reached 4% of world wide new light vehicle sales last year. To get above 40% though more charging infrastructure is needed at home or work. In 5 years a 200 mile bev should cost less in tco than (purchase, maintenance, fueling, insurance) than an equivalent ice vehicle as battery prices continue to fall. That's when subsidies for putting chargers in apartment complexes, condos, and work places need to take place, maybe sooner in California. In California and other high electrical price places tou low price charging for homes should get mandated by PUCs.

I really think the plug-in subsidies have worked and battery price declines and vehicle choice will happen without increasing these. Tesla sold every vehicle it could make. Toyota sold every rav4 prime it decided to make.

 

Probably the same drug-addled executives that work in their design department.
Dollah fo dollah PHEVs are only driven like gasoline cars when people do not have access to even MODERATELY convenient charging: work, home or public.
Even in places in the US with Baghdad-like electrical dependability, COST for electricity is generally at least on par with gas....especially when you can charge off-peak.
Since places with reasonably priced petrol tend to have reasonably priced electricity the cost per mile delta for the 'every-human' is generally negligible.

Charging is either VERY easy.....or VERY hard for some people.
From the Googles....
L1 chargers plug directly into a standard 120 volt (V) AC outlet supplying an average power output of 1.3 kW to 2.4 kW. This power output is equivalent to 3-5 miles of EV range per hour. An overnight charge will add 30-50 miles of range, which is sufficient for many commuters

That means that....yes.....'for many people' a BEV/PHEV makes some sense if they can charge at home and/or at work, but the math gets a little more cruel for people that hypercommute.....or rent.....or work where there's more than about 20 folks in the same building....or any of a number of other situations where the charging infrastructure just cannot compete with the gas-and-go set.
As inconvenient as stopping off at a gas station and getting 500 miles of range in 10 minutes IS....it's much easier than waiting for 15....20.....30 minutes at a much harder to find public charging station, so range security will absolutely be a thing with BEVs, until its not....but they call it range SECURITY for a reason!
Also....BEVs and PHEVs are still more expensive unless they're accompanied with white-collar-welfare kickbacks, the VERY presence of which are proof of the immaturity of the technology.

All of this is changing, and the rate of change is encouraging....BUT....the recidivism rate should be statistically 100 percent, and as long as people get into zany baseball statistics arguments about the data for this study or that white paper for why this is not so?

We just ain't there yet.

Remember also that the OP cites data from behind the tinsel curtain.
I'm guessing that THIER infrastructure is a little more mature that it is in places that are currently seeing population GROWTH.

 

Im afraid more is more,
total replenishment in 5 minutes existing is great but having owned a plug in continuously since 2005…

I can easily say there is NO WAY I could have owned if there were tons of $5+ per charge rapid chargers that I was required to use on every discharge
but cheap slow at home/work charging was impossible.

78% of Americans drive under 40 miles per day
thousands of outlets can be installed for the cost of one supercharger and right to charge is a very real need, mainly because (as grid operators have told me) one helps the grid, the other adds cost.
An 8 hour 110vac charge session on my plug in costs about a buck at retail (if I’m empty) and could easily be written off as a cost of business if marketed, a supercharger not so much.

Next even when I’ve been to areas with seemingly tons of public charging I’ve noted the following
1. Most public rapid charging is located in the absolute worst possible place and is totally useless
A) for reasons I can’t explain rapid chargers seem to usually (though not always) be located IN the city and even sometimes instead of near or on the highway stops miles off the road.
Imagine having to waste a half hour going to the gas station every time you want one and worse the gas station instead of being by the highway in the middle of nowhere where you actually need to fill from driving away from the city is only located in the city where you already have a full tank?

I strongly mapped my usual trips with a Bolt as baseline and accepted up north trips off limits but even going to my relatives in MN in winter would be “dangerous” because some idiot only located the rapid chargers in primary cities, meaning in the winter the first charger (180 miles from my home) would require me to leave the heat off driving more slowly in -20F bad weather, summer would be easy but I rarely visit then. What’s worse if that station was down I would be screwed, I usually go on weekends (Sundays mainly) and non public options like car dealers are hit or miss

2. Cost we do need rapid charging in the middle of nowhere for trips to actually work but if the only way to charge at home is off a rapid charger I noted the cost runs from high to insane .
A) add to this each station (even free ones) almost universally require its own app and account which is an immense aggravation, my mom doesn’t even have a cell so she would never be able to use them.
At the single public quick charge 30 miles from my home I noted a MN Bolt owner fumbling around a half hour trying to unlock and activate the off brand free charging system there (I told them to plug into the unlocked 16kw l2 while they played with their phone but they wouldn’t listen.
Is it too much to ask for gas pump simplicity?

3) My Plug ins border from antique to at the least obsolete and very few places have compatible “chargers” If I could just plug in or use L2 EVSE at my destinations it would be a million X better than what I find today.
A) Everyone I know locally with a plug in has an obsolete one (newest is 2015), places to plug in are far more important in this area than quick charging, outside the city is where we need rapid chargers.

4. When I did find the public chargers they were many times broken or unresponsive from the app, in some cases I encountered the same at 2 completely different locations even under different networks.