Once someone buys an electric vehicle, they tend to stick with it, according to a new survey from the Global EV Alliance, which represents EV driver associations in 38 countries.
The survey found that 92% of current owners plan to buy another EV as their next car. Just 1% said they would opt for a gasoline or diesel car if they had to replace their EV tomorrow, while 4% said they would consider a plug-in hybrid as a replacement for their EV.
PHEVs include a gasoline engine, but after already owning a fully electric model drivers might tend toward seeing it as a backup source.
2024 Tesla Model Y. – Courtesy of Tesla, Inc.
The survey is based on 23,000 responses from 18 countries gathered between Aug. 27 and Nov. 20, 2024. Those results were weighted based on each country’s share of the total EV fleet. For example, U.S. results were weighted up, and Sweden’s weighted down, to reflect the relative size of each country’s share of the EV fleet, the Global EV Alliance explained in a press release.
Low operating costs were the main reason for owners’ loyalty to EVs, with 45% of respondents listing this as their main reason for intending to buy another EV. Other important factors included the lower climate impact of EVs (40%), and that EVs are “good for the local environment and make less noise” (32%).
2023 Chevrolet Bolt EUV Redline Edition
Those results appear encouraging for EV adoption, but with surveys like this there is still much that is up for interpretation, including the phrasing of questions when asking consumers what they plan on buying after their first EV—and whether it truly replaces an EV or another vehicle in the household.
A 2023 study from S&P Global Mobility found that, Tesla aside, nearly half of EV-owning households still purchased an internal-combustion vehicle the next time around, in part due to lack of suitable EV options from non-Tesla brands. And the Department of Energy earlier this year noted that U.S. EVs are driven fewer miles than internal-combustion vehicles, meaning they might not always be serving as like-for-like replacements.