1 in 5 EV owners ditches electric, goes back to burning dead dinosaurs - California study

[oil pan 4]

I can see that driving an electric can be a pain in the but sometimes.
I have a 2011 leaf, no public charging and run up 1,200 to 1,900 miles per month. I guess they couldn't do math.

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by RedDevil

Almost all Tesla owners still drive them now.
I'd say that is more of a factor than gender?

The small and cute 500e was mostly bought by women, and its range and boot space are tiny. No wonder they dumped them for another small car with a better range and boot - that then had to be a gas car as the Chevy Spark EV and Mitsubishi iMiEV have the same problems.
The issue is not with women but rather the lack of EVs that suit their needs.

I'd be curious to know the ratio of men vs women that went back to ICE. Factors like women buying a cute 500e that has less utility than other options is still a gender difference, even if the reason they went back to ICE was that the 500e posed too many problems.

As a general gender difference, it seems apparent that women typically value form over function a bit more than men. Of course, men aren't uninterested in projecting a certain image (lifted trucks, sports cars, etc), but even those aesthetics tend to imply certain capability (off road ability, fast, etc).

My wife hates anything I propose that deviates from what she's used to. Then I implement the new thing, she gets used to it, and it gets incorporated into the things she doesn't want to deviate from. Women tend to be more conservative, where men tend to be more explorative.

[Piotrsko]

What about the lease is up and gassers are now cheaper to lease? I dunno, all my stuff is at least 10 years old.

[rmay635703]

Originally Posted by ME_Andy

The one in 5 are probably early Leaf owners.

I would gladly own a $2000 leaf if I didn’t have to pay $665 extra title + registration


The issue is that the 35 states that charge BEV fines don’t care if your car has a 400 mile range or 35mile range, even if it’s a rust bucket you still pay the same fine.


Needless to say in reality the older EVs should pay maybe $25 bi-annually like a moped, consumers realize this and won’t own.

[Hersbird]

I'm with redpoint5, I think some women perceive a saftey disadvantage in an EV. Having less places to refill, having to stay in those places a longer time, and potentially ending up in a spot with no ability to refill may make them less likely to buy again.

It's probably just as likely an ICE will randomly break down and put them in the same position. I bet if they were just doing a would you buy that particular car again, a woman with a breakdown like that would also pass on buying that particular model or even whole brand again.

[JSH]

Originally Posted by RedDevil

The availability of public chargers today should be way better than in 2012-2018. Over here 5 years ago public chargers were not that common. Now it is hard to find a parking lot of any size without charging options.

In the US it doesn't make sense to drive an EV if you have to rely on primarily on public chargers. Gas is cheap and public chargers are expensive.

Originally Posted by Piotrsko

What about the lease is up and gassers are now cheaper to lease? I dunno, all my stuff is at least 10 years old.

That is why I'm driving a gas car to work today.

I leased my 2016 Spark EV because it was $100 a month and I could charge for free at work. $100 a month was cheap enough to be considered fun money and a way to try out living with an EV even if it didn't make financial sense. When the lease was up the cheapest EV lease I could find was $200 - $250 a month.

My wife was riding her bicycle to work 4 days a weeks so it made absolutely no sense to buy another car instead of just having her drive the van to work 1 day a week. Now she has a new job with a 50 mile commute so she is driving the TDI.

Last week my employer told us we were returning to work on a hybrid model: 3 days in office, 2 days home. I'm planning on riding the Piaggio MP3 and picked up an new airbag vest last week.

Even if I didn't have motorcycles to ride there is no math that makes sense to buy or lease an EV instead of driving the van 3 days a week. (600 miles / 15 mpg = 40 gallons * $3 / gal = $120 a month)

[freebeard]

Originally Posted by Hersbird

I'm with redpoint5, I think some women perceive a saftey disadvantage in an EV.

All things being equal (as if) that would be 1 in 2. Something else must be going on.

Running out of fuel is a safety disadvantage, being broke down on the side of the road is another.

[Isaac Zachary]

I'm one person who got rid of their EV and went back to gasoline.

It had something to do with being stranded in the middle of nowhere in a snow storm.

That and you need to install a level 2 EVSE on your home if you want it to take you farther than your normal walking/biking distance every day.

That and to this day the EV charging infrastructure hasn't really grown here. There are still the same two 6kW charging stations in town. One has one place to charge and the other two, so you could charge 3 cars all at 6kW at the same time. That's it. Going east there was one Tesla super charging station put in 60 miles from here a couple years ago. West and south there's practically nothing still for hundreds of miles. Going north 30 miles there was one ChargePoint station installed. But going north leads to a dead end most of the year and so doesn't make much sense.

When I had the Leaf I did a lot of 120V 15amp charging, even on long (400-700 miles) road trips. That made the trips really long.

Until there's a mega-watt charging station at every corner or landlords are forced to install +50AMP 240V charging cords for all their tenants there's no point in getting an EV again for me. If it's for short distances we all as a family have told ourselves several times we all need the exercise, so what's the point of spending tens of thousands of dollars on something that helps us not walk or bike? If it's for long distances, there needs to be a way to charge it faster than 5 miles an hour.

[freebeard]

So what your saying is....

there is a potential for market disruption if Plasma Kinetics ships a drop-in 5.5 kWh cassette?

[JSH]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

I'd be curious to know the ratio of men vs women that went back to ICE. Factors like women buying a cute 500e that has less utility than other options is still a gender difference, even if the reason they went back to ICE was that the 500e posed too many problems.

From a different source 37% of EV buyers that went back to ICE were driving a Fiat 500e.

65% of BEV owners that went back to ICE say they are likely to purchase another BEV in the future. 56% of PHEV owners taht went back to ICE say they are likely to purchase another PHEV in the future.

71% of PEV owners that went back to ICE have no charging or only 110V charging at home.

I wouldn't read too much into the male vs female data. Only 23% of the people in the survey were female.

Non-paywall paper is here: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/11n6f4hs