Today’s going to be a big electric car day around these parts, though we’ll make sure to temper that with some good ol’ gas-powered weirdness. We’ve just posted a review of the Mustang Mach-E Rally and have the Equinox EV review coming out at noon. There’s a lot of news as well.
Right off the tip, there’s some interesting data out there about where electric cars are distributed. You won’t be surprised to find out that California is the key EV market, but maybe you wouldn’t expect Florida and Texas to be increasing their EV and hybrid fleets.
This switch towards electrification isn’t going to be evenly distributed geographically or over time, and that’s going to screw with some suppliers according to site favorite Carlos Tavares. This uneven market is having a huge impact on Fisker, which just unloaded another huge chunk of its staff in a mass layoff.
The delayed rollout of the Volkswagen ID.7 in the United States doesn’t seem to bother most dealers, who didn’t seem to think it was going to be a success in the first place. Aight, let’s Dump.
All EVs Are Belong To California (And Florida And Texas)
I’m going to link to The Detroit News version of this Bloomberg story because there’s no subscription required to read it, but shoutout Kyle Stock for his hard work pulling out some fun numbers:
Almost one-third of new electric vehicles are going to one of three states: California, Florida or Texas, according to CarGurus data. To some degree, that makes sense — they are the most populous states. If a third of drivers are interested in buying an EV, that third represents more potential buyers in California than Montana.
But the byproduct is a dearth of options for drivers elsewhere. At the end of the first quarter, some 23 states had fewer than 1,000 electric vehicles on offer, excluding automakers like Tesla Inc. that do an end-run around traditional dealerships. Nine states had fewer than 400.
Did you catch that?
- Nearly 1/3rd of new EVs are going to CA/FL/TX
- About half of states have fewer than 1,000 new EVs listed
- Nine have fewer than 400
The big caveat in this data is that it excludes automakers who sell directly to customers, so no Rivian, Polestar, and, more importantly, no Tesla in here. But on a relative basis, it shows that EVs are not a universal phenomenon everywhere in the United States.
If you look at CarGurus’ quarterly report you can also see that this gap is growing as California, Texas, and Florida continue to grab more and more inventory relative to other states.
This means that if you want an EV in some of the states with few EVs for sale (Wyoming, The Dakotas, Maine, et cetera) you’re likely to lack a lot of options. From the same Bloomberg article:
[I]f you want an ID.4 in South Dakota, you better act fast — only three in the state are unspoken for. The same is true in Arkansas and Mississippi, according to the latest data from CarGurus Inc., a listing platform that captures most US new car inventory.
If you live in South Dakota and drive an ID.4 please reach out!
Guy Being Sued By Suppliers Is Suddenly Worried About Suppliers
As CEO of Stellantis, Carlos Taveras (pictured above), has found himself in frequent conflict with his own suppliers, resulting in multiple lawsuits.
And, yet, Tavares sort of sounds worried about suppliers in a conversation with the Bernstein Strategic Decisions conference, via Reuters:
Tavares said the challenge for automakers was to sell EVs, whose production costs are 40% to 50% higher, at the same price as equivalent petrol models. This forces them to cut costs at every level of their operations, including supply chains and logistics.
“You are going to see a huge shift of the supplier base. The sourcing will move from the Western world to the best cost countries,” he said during the Bernstein Strategic Decisions conference.
“The EV race has become a cost cutting race,” he added.
Lol, ok, maybe it’s not so much a concern for his suppliers but a warning. The other way to read this is Tavares saying to governments and suppliers: Hey, we’re going to have to ship your jobs to Malaysia if you don’t help us out on costs.
Bloodbath At Fisker
Fisker, the automaker, is in trouble. Its founder/CEO is selling his house, reporters and investigators are looking into the company, and the company’s one car is not selling well.
The company owes a lot of money to an unnamed investor and is possibly headed for bankruptcy. According to this report from TechCrunch, that investor insisted on more layoffs than the hundreds that occurred:
Founder and CEO Henrik Fisker told employees that the large investor his company owes money to — and the chief restructuring officer working on the investor’s behalf — wanted to let more people go, according to employees who attended. Fisker has never disclosed who is ultimately behind the convertible debt investment in question, though Henrik Fisker did reference Heights Capital Management during Wednesday’s meeting when discussing the layoffs, according to the two employees. Heights Capital Management is an affiliate of financial services giant Susquehanna International Group.
Not good.
Dealers Don’t Seem To Care About Losing The ID.7
Here’s a quote from Automotive News that could literally be about almost any new expensive electric car:
“We brought up a little bit of caution behind it,” Luciano said. “Are we sure this is a good idea? We didn’t know an exact pricing, but [it’s] definitely a $50,000 to $60,000 car, without incentives. Is there any chance of it being competitive? And we felt like [it’s] not.”
That’s John Luciano, owner of Street Volkswagen in Amarillo, Texas, who said that most dealers are cool with VW’s decision to delay the Volkswagen ID.7 sedan, a car we apparently drove. Thomas has a good take on this you should read, but it’s nice to see automakers starting to accept that there’s not a huge demand for $60,000 EVs from mainstream, nonluxury brands.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
Since we’re talking about Florida I had to do it. I don’t know that I love this album, though I’ve been required to listen to it a bunch. I do love Florence + The Machine and it’s a fun song.
The Big Question
How many people do you know who own an EV?
I don’t think Tavares is worried about suppliers. To me, his statement sounds like he’s threatening to source parts in China directly if the current suppliers won’t fall in line on the prices.
I don’t currently personally know anyone that owns an EV. Although my current job has a few EV chargers here but I don’t know the people that use them. When I worked at a previous job at a national lab I knew a few guys that owned Tesla’s as they had EV chargers on site at most major buildings and they actually had an old full service shop on site that they converted to a station to charge EV’s. I wouldn’t mind owning an EV but nothing really strikes my fancy as most seem to be some type of cross over type thing or a truck/suv. There really isn’t anything that is either sporty or a wagon available in the US that is somewhat affordable. Though I have been tempted by the prices of used Polestar 2’s.
I own an EV (Lightning), and know six others who own them: Model 3 (x3), Lightning, Model Y, Model X. I’m in southern New Hampshire, and New England seems pretty rife with EVs. If you don’t travel much outside New England they make good sense, it’s a pretty small region, geographically.
Whoops, now 7- forgot a Rivian R1S
Indeed, at one point the Nissan dealer in Burlington, VT sold more Leafs than any other outside SoCal.
I scrolled through that entire far-too-PowerPoint-like CarGurus link to find the complete list, to compare Vermont’s inventory with Wyoming’s since they’re the two least populous states and at near opposite ends of the EV adoption spectrum due to geography and politics.
Considering that CA, FL, and TX are the three most populous states and together host over a quarter of the total U.S. population, it doesn’t surprise me at all that they lead in EV registrations. All three have massive urban areas – the natural habitat for EVs – and diverse demographics when it comes to age, education, income, and ethnicity. Plus they all three boast A LOT of wealthy residents who tend to be early tech adopters.
EV per Capita would be a far more helpful metric. Taken further to incorporate your observation of the impact of urban areas: EV per Capita (overall) and EV per Capita (urban region)
Rural Maine, and I know over ten people, less then 100 who now own EVs. Recently it seems if you want a new car and you know me, and I would like to think I’m popular. You either by a KIA/Hyundai or you buy an EV or you buy a EV by Kia/Hyundai. I know four people who’ve bought Ioniq 5’s. Including one who traded in the Rivian cause it was too fast for his teenagers. A few people with Rivian’s, but that’s like the Maine Ferrari, so your getting looks. Three Nissan Aryia. And oddly no one with a Tesla. You can charge at my workplace, and most of these people are my Co-workers, so there’s that. Bit of a thing, as charger space has been a hot commodity.
I’ve got 2 and they work great in my area — our power is really reasonable, so I save a ton of money. My mom drives a Bolt and really likes it, and I’ve got some friends who have gone to electric as well. It’s perfect if you have a house with reasonable power rates or high enough density of public chargers.
EVs are great if you live in a city and can charge at home – otherwise they have real disadvantages.
I live in the Seattle metro area and offhand can think of more than 20 people driving EVs. Most are part of multi-car fleets where the EV is the daily driver, but it shares a garage with a ICE SUV, Truck, or sports car.
The Rivian owners seem the happiest, followed by Mach-E owners, and cheap used Leaf buyers. Tesla owners seem impressed with their cars… but also have lots of complaints. I don’t know the Lucid or Polestar drivers well enough to really have a feel for their experiences.
Strangely, I don’t know any Ioniq owners! Although they look great, are very common in Seattle, and would be on my personal EV shopping list.
I can only think of one person who currently has an EV, a coworker here St. Louis who has a Hyundai Ioniq 6. I know two people who used to, a friend in suburban Chicago who traded a Model X for a Land Rover Defender 110 and a friend in Seattle who also had a Model X and I believe traded theirs for a BMW of some kind.
And to be fair, the county I work in has 100K more people than the entire state of South Dakota, so they’re not exactly a big car market to begin with.
I know five EV owners! One was a recent purchase.
I own a Polestar 2. I know two others who own an EV. One is a coworker. However, there are quite a lot of Tesla of various makes around the city, plus an occasional Rivian or Ioniq. I am in central NM, so I am in a weird in-between zone for cars.
How do you like the Polestar? Something happened here in CA recently and they started showing up everywhere I go in the past 4-6 weeks. I’m sure there’s some Baader-Meinhof going on but it does feel like I see 4-5 a day every day.
“Nearly 1/3rd of new EVs are going to CA/FL/TX”
…where nearly 1/3 of the population of the country live. 27% of the country live in those 3 states.
This isn’t news worthy.
Exactly.
Land doesn’t vote, nor does it buy cars.
People do.
I know three people with BEVs. Bolt, Model3, Taycan.
Half the states in the US have hardly any people living in them so… that makes sense.
I live in Upstate NY, and there are exceptionally few EVs out here. It’s semi-rural so that’s not a surprise. And the winter weather is severe here, nobody has done a good job properly demonstrating what the actual impact of cold weather is on EVs, so a lot of people out here assume that EVs basically turn into paperweights for half the year unless you get something with an insanely large, and expensive, battery. Which is sort of true.
To answer the actual question… no. I actually don’t know anyone that currently owns an EV. This includes a guy that basically sells large solar installations and functions as a contractor that installs Tesla charging stations. Even he doesn’t own one. Like everyone else around here, he drives an Outback.
I know 2 people with BEVs. One just bought a Model Y and loves it. The other bought a Bolt to replace his full size, 4×4 pickup as his commuter. According to him, the car payment and insurance are less than he was paying for gas each month driving his truck.
I can’t believe I saw a Fisker Ocean in the wild before a new Z.
To date I’ve seen 2 Oceans and zero Hornets.
I suppose one way to cut costs on EVs is to strip out all the luxury and convenience and driver aid features they tend to have bundled in as mandatory standard equipment, and to build more of them as smaller, lighter compacts instead of as crossovers or trucks or bigger sedans. Probably won’t get you anywhere close to 40-50%, that requires vastly cheaper batteries, either through new chemistry or massive production volume, or both
I’m in West Michigan and bought a 2015 E-Golf with 50K on the clock last Summer and just picked up a 2019 E-tron with about 75K on it. Prices were simply awesome, allowing our multi-car family tiptoe into EVs at a great price. 3rd Vehicle is still gas (Gladiator). Former Automotive Supplier Employee that remembers when a VP said “Tesla doesnt stand a chance”
I have to drive through some pretty hoity-toity neighborhoods to get to work and see tons of EVs there, Tesla, Rivian, Lucid, Polestars, etc so I guess my perception of EV adoption is a bit skewed because I see so many. It surprises me that Texas makes the top 3 though since we have 0 state incentives for EVs or hybrids.
Texas also can’t seem to manage to keep the power on.
This is true
It doesn’t really surprise me about Texas. There are several large cities and a lot of wealth in Texas. EVs are expensive (generally speaking) and most people aren’t on one end of the political spectrum or the other, they’re closer to the middle, even if they lean one direction.
Population-wise most of us are centrists but the politicians mostly lean far to the right so I never expect to see any state-level EV incentives here like CA hands out.
I know of like 5 EV’s with plates that live in town, but I don’t know them.
One has a light green Leaf that visits his daughter constantly with it. Kinda envious, because I like the color. For some odd reason!
I don’t know anyone who owns an EV currently, although one of my HS friends used to own a Model 3.
When he sold it he bought a Kia Forte and a Ferrari 360 Modena. Probably not the most common combo of vehicles out there.
I’m at zero, but there’s someone in the company with an Ioniq 5 that I see in the parking lot whenever I go to the head office for a meeting, that seems to be the only one in the organization, and one of my dad’s friends (a retired police chief) just traded a gas F-150 for an F-150 Lightning. I don’t know the guy personally, but my dad said he brought it around to their house a few weeks ago all excited to show it off. I think those are the two closest connections I have to an EV owner, unless someone has like an old Citicar tucked in the back of a barn that they’ve just never mentioned
My employer has a fleet of Lightnings, so maybe in that sense I know an owner.
I don’t know anyone who owns a EV, or even a hybrid. And I am in a pretty large east coast city just outside New York City.
I live in BFE Ohio and I have an eTorque Ram 1500(not sure that counts). My kids soccer coach has a hybrid CRV. There’s another parent with a hybrid Tuscon. I know of two Hummer EVs in the area(not sure who the hell can afford them). I also see tons of Tesla Model 3/Ys all over the place. A few Chevy Bolts are around too. Plus, I saw my first Rivian in my small town(Ive only ever seen them on a hauler). I’m in a deeply red area as well so people are finding ways to buy this stuff. At least here, anyway.
I see plenty of EV’s and Hybrids. I just don’t know anyone personally that owns one. Like friends or family.
That’s surprising to hear. I’m in Idaho and know a lot of hybrid owners and a few EV owners. Even a bunch of the climate change deniers don’t mind better fuel efficiency.
Of course, we do also have a lot of full size pickups with emissions deletes and diesels modified to roll coal, so it all balances out.
Same here. Bunch of bro dozers that sound like they are stuck in first gear rolling coal.
The ID.7 will absolutely be a flop in the US. Look at the Arteon, which in the high-30s/low-40s can’t move more than a hundred units a month, add on a 50% price premium, a likely disappointing EV range for the money, VW’s terrible interior design (compared to the genuinely nice Arteon), bland exterior design, and not enough incentives; these will be glued to the floor until the $299/mo lease deals come out.
It’d be interesting to see the other information for these states. Like:
How many hybrid or PHEV are selling?What’s the average age of vehicle on the road in those states?Like, in Wyoming, a pure EV makes no sense. If you need something from a major metro area, your choices are literally in the next state over (Denver or SLC), so you better have a place to charge it there. Wyoming also has one of the highest age-of-vehicle-on-the-road numbers (close to 16 years, a couple years over the US average). And that’s an average!
I looked for hybrid stats for Wyoming, but couldn’t find any. I will say I do see a lot of things like Rav4 hybrids and the like out there, but almost no Teslas (which are commonplace in Denver, but almost disappear outside of it).
Directly, 4 or 5, I think. But I sort of know quite a few more, working in tech. We have a pretty significant number on site compared to the surrounding area.
Of those I know directly, it’s mostly Teslas. One Fiat EV, though. It’s a fun orange one and he let me drive it a little!
Really funny headline that completely ignores reality.
Look, “less than 400 EVs for sale” is more than enough in-
Wyoming
North Dakota
South Dakota
Montana
Idaho
Iowa
Kansas
Oklahoma
Alaska
I bet I guessed the right 9 states!
I’d replace Iowa with Arkansas, but the rest of your list checks out.
I don’t know, northwest Arkansas is flush with Wal-Mart money and is changing rapidly. Plus, their governor’s lectern is just way too nice to lump them in with these other states.
Iowa, on the other hand, is like Pleasantville. Nothing ever changes.
I definitely agree with the NW Fayetteville area being the likely EV demographic in Arkansas. My thought is the Des Moines area being larger overall for EV take rates over that (I’ve seen plenty of Teslas and MachEs in DSM, but haven’t been to Arkansas in years).
“Next two exits- Des Moines”