- EVs sales are increasing in the U.S., but the adoption is spread unevenly across the country, with coastal states showing more interest in EVs than others.
- The transition sentiment in the U.S. remains flat year-over-year, while people in Europe and China are far more excited about EVs.
- Even then, EV buyers rarely switch back to gas cars in the U.S., with a whopping 76% of them planning to buy an EV again as their next purchase.
Electric vehicles aren’t just better for the environment, they’re increasingly the smarter economic choice for your wallet, too. And according to a new McKinsey & Company study, once people make the switch, they rarely look back.
In its latest Mobility Consumer Insights report, McKinsey says 76% of U.S. households that own an EV plan to buy another one next. That’s up from 56% last year, driven by improved charging infrastructure, better reliability, longer driving range and an influx of new and affordable models. EV owner satisfaction in the U.S. jumped from 60% in 2024 to 73% this year.
Even in households that own both EVs and gas cars, most are planning to ditch the combustion car for a battery-powered one. Fifty nine percent of such mixed households said they will replace their gas car with an EV. Only 14% said they would buy another gas car and 24% said they would buy a plug-in hybrid.
Interestingly, 31% of ICE-only households said they plan to buy one more ICE car, while 35% of them say they'll never buy an EV. (ICE in this context includes traditional hybrids). That means a majority of them aren't switching soon. Meanwhile, a majority of PHEV-owning households (52%) say they plan to buy another PHEV.
But the EV divide in the U.S. runs deep. States like California, New York and Washington are matching the adoption levels of Europe. But large swaths of rural America remain firmly in the gas car camp. Age plays a big role too, as more than half of respondents under 45 said their next car would be electric. Gen X and boomers are mostly uninterested in EVs, especially outside big cities.
That’s where some of the optimism fades, as the U.S. is lagging badly on the global level.
McKinsey surveyed 26,000 people across key global regions, 3,000 in each major country, with mix of 1,000 BEV owners and 2,000 gas car owners. Only 12% of U.S. respondents plan to buy an EV next, compared to 23% in Europe and 45% in China. Worse, 32% of U.S. buyers say they’ll never consider a fully electric car. In China, that number is just 3%. Granted, China has a decade-long head start on incentives, affordable models and charging infrastructure. Plus, many people there have never owned gas cars, or only owned one before EVs took over.
“What you see here is in the U.S, the sentiment towards battery electric vehicles hasn't changed all that much,” Philipp Kampshoff, a senior partner at McKinsey & Company said during a virtual roundtable with reporters. “In Europe and China, these numbers over time are increasing, whereas in the U.S, we're seeing they’re mostly flat."
“In turn, we're seeing a much higher interest in plug-in hybrids going forward,” he said.
The shift researchers saw in China about a decade ago—where PHEV uptake was increasing—is now happening in the U.S. Only 7% of households which own only gas cars said they planned to buy an EV next. But 17% of them said they were planning to switch to PHEVs. These owners may live in EV charging deserts or are not confident about going fully electric cars due to myriad reasons. PHEVs could be the stepping stone for them, even if they aren't an easy solution.
So even though the average national interest in EVs may seem like it’s stuck in neutral—due to factors like age, demographics and regional divisions—one thing is clear. Once Americans go electric, they don’t go back.
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