Are Americans set to put EV growth in reverse? | Rare

In 2022, the Biden Administration passed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the most promising package of climate policy investments passed in United States history. The IRA was laden with financial incentives for consumers and businesses to adopt climate-friendly behaviors like purchasing an electric vehicle (EV) or installing home solar panels. 

Since then, the percentage of Americans reporting to own an EV has increased, from 4% in 2023 to 7% in 2024, according to a recent Gallup poll. But that only tells part of the story. According to the same Gallup poll, the percentage of people who said they were seriously considering buying an EV in both the near and distant future declined sharply. 

If EV purchases are following the standard adoption curve, then they may have stalled at early adopters. 

In 2021, behavioral scientists at Rare sought to measure and track changes in public sentiment about critical and high-impact climate-mitigating behaviors over time. They created the Climate Culture Index, a research initiative specially designed to track Americans’ state of mind relative to key climate-friendly behaviors.  

The 2024 running of the Index returned with data broadly consistent with Gallup’s results: Americans’ average intention to drive an EV dipped from 36% in 2021 to under 30% in 2024. There was an even bigger drop in the percentage of Americans considering driving an EV: from 50% in 2021 to 37% in 2024. 

 Public confidence in EVs is waning. Many polls have attempted to answer why this is, mostly by gauging public opinion on specific aspects related to EVs such as cost and battery life. On average, nearly 2 in 3 Americans do not believe that EVs are ready for widespread use because of cost and only about 1 in 5 Americans believe that EVs are superior vehicles, according to research from the Potential Energy Coalition. 

“Bad news sells a lot faster than good news,” says Rakhim Rakhimov, one of the principal researchers for the Index at Rare. “As people become more exposed to EVs they may also become more familiar with the barriers to owning one of these cars. This is perhaps one of the reasons why we saw a notable decline in people’s beliefs about the benefits of driving electric.” 

These individual measures help show why people may be losing trust in EVs, but they are still missing a critical piece of the puzzle. Unlike other polls, the Index shows that people are losing confidence both in their personal ability to switch to an EV and in their belief that switching to an EV is the right thing to do. To do this, the Index asks specific behavior-related questions such as, “Do you think that people should drive an EVs because it is the right thing to do?” and “How confident are you in your ability to purchase and drive an EV?” These behavioral measures are known respectively as self-efficacy and personal normative beliefs and are shown in the psychological literature to be important precursors of behavior change.

“Someone thinking that purchasing an EV is a hard thing to do is easier to overcome if they already believe it’s the right thing to do,” says Brandon Schauer, Senior Vice President of Rare’s Climate Culture program, which runs the Index. “The Index suggests that the majority of the climate actions tested are increasingly perceived as ineffective at tackling climate change.” 

The Index, combined with a choppy EV market, highlights that there is more to address than just lowering the cost of EVs with financial incentives or installing more charging stations. Policymakers need to address the real problem that people believe less and less in their ability to take actions that matter for the climate. 

“We need to build confidence and self-efficacy into the act of owning an EV from the ground up,” says Rakhimov. “One of the best ways to do that is to get someone into an EV and try one.” 

Two potential ways to increase self-efficacy are highlighting the successful experiences of relatable others (i.e., neighbors, friends, colleagues) who have adopted a behavior and giving people the opportunity to learn from others like them about a particular behavior. Solutions like Acterra’s long-standing Karl Knapp GoEV Program are designed to do just that: this community-centered program increases people’s confidence in driving an electric vehicle (EV) by offering test drives with EV owners from the same community, free 1:1 consultations with EV owners, multi-lingual educational workshops to dispel the myth of owning an EV, and provide support with identifying and applying for financial incentives and rebates 

Similarly, researchers should look out for ways to better incorporate behavioral science into polling and data when asking Americans about their experiences and expectations when approaching the EV market. Dr. Hannah Ritchie, an environmental data scientist  at the University of Oxford, commented on the ways in which polls are worded when it comes to EVs may be misleading. 

“Some might have said they would own an EV in the next 15 years because they …anticipate that new gasoline cars will be banned…or carmakers will stop producing them,” she wrote in her blog, Sustainability by Numbers. “In that sense, it’s not fully reflecting their attitude to EVs, but their expectations for where the car industry is heading.” 

Acknowledging this need to better understand people’s attitudes towards climate change, the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication (YPCCC), in partnership with Rare and Data for Good at Meta, released the International Opinion on Climate Change Poll, which investigated climate change knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, policy preferences, and behaviors of nearly 140,000 Facebook users in 187 countries and territories. It is the first poll of its kind to include behavioral prompts. 

By understanding the psychological barriers preventing the widespread adoption of behaviors like purchasing an EV, policymakers and intervention designers can devise more tailored and effective behaviorally informed strategies for helping consumers and constituents transition to low-carbon lifestyles. 

“Individual actions are critical to addressing climate change,” says Rakhimov. “When it comes to EV adoption in the United States, we need to shift out of reverse.”