Why some electric car owners return to gas – the reasons aren’t surprising

[Luke42]

I am surprised that the EVs poor towing performance is not listed as a reason for returning to ICE.
I must agree that if I didn't have at home 240V charging I would not want to own an EV.

Existing EVs are not marketed to those who tow, even though some Tesla models are rated for light towing.

People with heavy towing needs aren't buying Model Xs by mistake, and then switching back.

This may change with the onslaught of EV pickup trucks and large SUVs. But none of plugin tow vehicles I'm personally excited about have been delivered to customers, yet.

 

[Monkchoi]

L2 (220V/240V) charger at home would probably be a very good investment.

As Crissa mentioned, there are a lot of J1772 chargers and most should be fairly easily used by Tesla vehicles

In Dallas/Fort-Worth,TX metro area there are many public chargers
1. more J1772 DC-Fast chargers locations than Tesla DC Fast chargers ( Superchargers).
2. more J1772 L2 chargers locations than Tesla L2 chargers.

At the Charge Hub link below you can see charger locations
You can select charge speed ( level filter ) and also connector type (connector filter)
Charge Hub
https://chargehub.com/en/charging-stations-map.html

Plug Share
https://www.plugshare.com/

Better Routeplanner
https://abetterrouteplanner.com

Charge Point
https://www.chargepoint.com/resources/finding-charging-stations-chargepoint-app/

Thank you guys for providing me with the knowledge and resources! This is a cool forum?.

 

[FutureBoy]

Interesting that the inability or inefficiency of EVs as tow vehicles does not feature as a reason for going back to ICE.

What EV that is currently out in consumer hands would you recommend for towing???

I think towing is not yet a reason to return to ICE because short of a couple people on YouTube, no one bought an EV thinking they wanted to use it for towing.

Once EV pickups are out in consumers hands, this may become a more prevalent reason why some might return to ICE.

 

[firsttruck]

What EV that is currently out in consumer hands would you recommend for towing???

I think towing is not yet a reason to return to ICE because short of a couple people on YouTube, no one bought an EV thinking they wanted to use it for towing.

The commonality of towing using car & small SUVs also varies a lot by country & area of the world. In U.S. many people will buy a pickup just to occasionally tow. In U.S., the number of households with multiple vehicles is much higher. In U.S., you have many people commuting in full-size pickups with empty beds & nothing towed.

In Europe using car or small/medium SUV is much more common with few people using pickups.
But in Europe the average trailer towed is much smaller than the almost full-size house seen so often in U.S.

 

[FutureBoy]

The commonality of towing using car & small SUVs also varies a lot by country & area of the world. In U.S. many people will buy a pickup just to occasionally tow. In U.S., the number of households with multiple vehicles is much higher. In U.S., you have many people commuting in full-size pickups with empty beds & nothing towed.

In Europe using car or small/medium SUV is much more common with few people using pickups.
But in Europe the average trailer towed is much smaller than the almost full-size house seen so often in U.S.

I get that. Personally I have a small trailer rated for 900 lbs that I have towed using relatively small cars including my Prius. But the uses for that are only for short or occasional distances.

I’m sure that somewhere out there someone decided to use a small trailer like this for multiple cross country trips or overloaded their trailer well beyond capacity resulting in very dangerous conditions. My point though is that I really don’t see any non-idiot drivers looking at a Chevy Bolt and dreaming of it as a towing machine.

The issue as I see it is not what physics and engineering allow. It has to do with a person’s dreams and intent when they bought their EV.

Is it a range killer to add a little trailer behind an EV? Sure. But if the reason you bought an EV had nothing to do with towing, are you going to sell your EV specifically because towing range sucks?

Your circumstances and needs may have changed resulting in a motivation to sell the EV to get a better tow vehicle. But that would not cause one to blame the EV.

Or I suppose some people are so insecure and out of touch that they might blame the EV for their own change of heart on the EV.

To each their own.

 

[Crissa]

You can charge from 3-4 mph from a normal 15a wall outlet with a Tesla's included wall cable. To get 250 miles a week, you'd only have to charge about 10 hours a night.

And that's turning charging down to minimum. You can use a better outlet, 20a is pretty common for work tools in a garage. Or a 50a 240v dryer outlet... That can charge 6x faster than that basic 15a outlet. With 10 hours a night, you'd be able to charge 1050 miles a week!

-Crissa

 

[xodarap1]

I am surprised that the EVs poor towing performance is not listed as a reason for returning to ICE.
I must agree that if I didn't have at home 240V charging I would not want to own an EV.

More males buy and drive ICE trucks and tow with them, so less likely for them to buy non tesla EV's with less range and other decreased capabilities.. so not many to switch back from that group. This would mean more females buying non tesla and having more issues with range and flexibility of charging then switching back to ICE. That leaves the other males and females that did research and homework to understand the pros and cons of the tesla vehicles before they purchased and less likely to go back to ICE. Anywho, just the crazy way my mind thought of it when I read it.

 

[AlexD]

What EV that is currently out in consumer hands would you recommend for towing???

I think towing is not yet a reason to return to ICE because short of a couple people on YouTube, no one bought an EV thinking they wanted to use it for towing.

Once EV pickups are out in consumers hands, this may become a more prevalent reason why some might return to ICE.

People use their cars to tow jetski's, scramblers, small luggage trailers, sail boats and small motorboats. Unfortunately there is no EV that is any good for long haul towing. It seems like 80 miles is about all the range you get. The actual pulling power is no problem because EVs have the power to pull out tree stumps - range is the problem as power consumption goes from 230 w/mile to over 700 W/mile when you tow.

 

[1ofafew]

Why some electric car owners return to gas – the reasons aren’t surprising
Fred Lambert
- Apr. 29th 2021 12:35 pm ET

@FredericLambert

https://electrek.co/2021/04/29/study-why-some-electric-car-owners-gas-reasons-surprising/


A study has looked into why about 18% of electric car owners go back to gas-powered vehicles.

The reasons are mostly exactly what we expected.



University of California Davis researchers surveyed just over 4,000 households who own or owned electric vehicles in California and found that about 20% of plug-in hybrid owners and 18% of all-electric vehicle owners end up going back to gasoline-powered vehicles.

This number will be surprising to some, but the focus of the study was the reasons that led them to switch back to gas, and when you look into those, they are not really surprising.

Researchers Scott Hardman and Gil Tal wrote in the study posted in the Nature Energy journal:


Therefore, loyalty is higher to battery-electric vehicles than plug-in hybrids, which is not too surprising considering plug-ins have been seen as a compromising technology to help the transition to all-electric.

The main problem appears to be access to level 2 charging at home, which is the most obvious reason and a problem that the industry has been trying to address.

Arguably the biggest consumer advantage to all-electric vehicles for consumers is the potential of always having “a full tank” overnight without having to go to the gas station.

If you can’t charge at home for whatever reason, like not having a parking spot or no parking with access to charging, which is often the case for apartment dwellers, it really hinders the EV ownership experience.

Those EV owners have to rely on public charging stations, which is not as smooth of an experience, but charging networks are trying to add more capacity in urban areas to address the issue.

The most surprising factor that appears to influence going back to gas is that women EV owners go back at a higher rate than men.

But that may also play a role in the kinds of electric vehicles people are buying.

The study found that people buying Tesla vehicles are the least likely EV owners to go back to gas, while Fiat 500e buyers are much more likely to go back to gas.

That’s not surprising when you look at how the former compares to gas-powered cars in its segments in comparison to the 500e in its own segment.

————————————————

TWO THINGS OF NOTE:
1) Tesla owners were least likely to go back to gas
2) That one of the reasons for going back to gas was “not being male.” I would have expected that to be totally opposite.

Interesting that the inability or inefficiency of EVs as tow vehicles does not feature as a reason for going back to ICE.

The fact that the return to gas is more on the woman’s side has less to do with women not being able to afford the vehicle. If she couldn’t afford the vehicle, she wouldn’t buy it in the first place lol! It has more to do with the fact that, work or not, more often than not, the woman is the one shuttling kids back and forth to extra-curricular sports/karate class/dance class/ etc, and may find it super inconvenient to always charge up.

 

[AlexD]

What EV that is currently out in consumer hands would you recommend for towing???

I think towing is not yet a reason to return to ICE because short of a couple people on YouTube, no one bought an EV thinking they wanted to use it for towing.

Once EV pickups are out in consumers hands, this may become a more prevalent reason why some might return to ICE.

If I need to tow a trailer with garden refuse to the tip or collect the new fridge I bought at Lowes, a Model X, 3 or Y are perfect because I am probably not going to do more than about 15 miles round trip and these vehicles are massively powerful so towing is a breeze. If I want to tow a caravan for my vacation then these vehicles are near useless with an effective range of only about 80 - 100 miles.
The bottom line is: short distance towing - marvelous.
Long haul towing - pretty useless.
But I can live with a sub optimal towing sedan but not with a pick-up. The pick-up must tow efficiently.

 

[AlexD]

The fact that the return to gas is more on the woman’s side has less to do with women not being able to afford the vehicle. If she couldn’t afford the vehicle, she wouldn’t buy it in the first place lol! It has more to do with the fact that, work or not, mireoften than not, the woman is the one shuttling kids back and forth to extra-curricular sports/karate class/dance class/ etc, and may find it super inconvenient to always charge up.

But if you charge at home you start each day with a full "tank". Teslas with a range of at least 300 miles (real world maybe 220 miles) is more than any Mom shuttling kids to and fro could possibly use in a day.

 

[firsttruck]

The fact that the return to gas is more on the woman’s side has less to do with women not being able to afford the vehicle. If she couldn’t afford the vehicle, she wouldn’t buy it in the first place lol! It has more to do with the fact that, work or not, more often than not, the woman is the one shuttling kids back and forth to extra-curricular sports/karate class/dance class/ etc, and may find it super inconvenient to always charge up.

But if you charge at home you start each day with a full "tank". Teslas with a range of at least 300 miles (real world maybe 220 miles) is more than any Mom shuttling kids to and fro could possibly use in a day.

Agree 100% with AlexD's reply

Even a L1 110V charging probably works for most kid shuttling. For sure L2 220V charging.

 

[Crissa]

The fact that the return to gas is more on the woman’s side has less to do with women not being able to afford the vehicle. If she couldn’t afford the vehicle, she wouldn’t buy it in the first place lol! It has more to do with the fact that, work or not, more often than not, the woman is the one shuttling kids back and forth to extra-curricular sports/karate class/dance class/ etc, and may find it super inconvenient to always charge up.

That's... No.

It's even more convenient to shuttle kids about in an EV. Because you never have to go to the gas station.

Women are more likely to head households with a single vehicle. That means their one vehicle has to do all the things. That's one thing EVs are less good at.

It's just like more coupes are owned by men than women.

-Crissa

 

[Suskis]

if you buy shitty EVs in the beginning, it's obvious you are going to miss a normal car. Plus, if you don't buy a Tesla you are missing the Supercharger network, thus increasing range anxiety. All in all, it's customers'fault for not buying a Tesla. I think that no more than 1% of people would come back to ICEs from a Tesla. And, in the end, going back to ICEs is plain silly. In a few years it will be impossible to resell a used ICE car: no more gasoline available, no more ICEs allowed on the streets and no more ICEs sold by anyone

 

[firsttruck]

Good news! I found a free link to the study.


Discontinuance Among California’s Electric Vehicle Buyers: Why are Some Consumers Abandoning Electric Vehicles?
2021
Author(s): Hardman, ScottTal, Gil
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/11n6f4hs
** on web page, near report title there is button to download PDF


Scott Hardman
Professional Researcher, Plug-in Hybrid & Electric Vehicle (PH&EV) Research Center
[email protected]
https://its.ucdavis.edu/people/scot...’t_driven_less_than_gas_cars&utm_medium=email

Gil Tal
Director, The Plug-in Hybrid & Electric Vehicle (PH&EV) Research CenterTransportation Research Director, The China Center for Energy and TransportationAdmission Graduate Advisor, Graduate Groups in Transportation Technology, and Policy (TTP)
[email protected]
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/gil-tal/5/943/428 ople/gil-tal/?utm_source=BenchmarkEmail&utm_campaign=Transportation_and_Climate_Blog%3a_No%2c_electric_vehicles_aren%e2%80%99t_driven_less_than_gas_cars&utm_medium=email
https://its.ucdavis.edu/people/gil-...’t_driven_less_than_gas_cars&utm_medium=email