In March, Leah covered how as Hurricane Idalia made its way through Florida last year, firefighters braced themselves to deal with a challenge entirely different from the issues they typically face with storm clean-up: electric vehicles that caught fire from damage during a storm.
As Leah noted, these types of fires are difficult to put out and pose serious safety threats to people.
This is just one example of the list of safety concerns surrounding electric vehicles. In some areas, people have been stranded in frigid weather when their electric vehicle will not turn on.
McKinsey & Co.’s Mobility Consumer Pulse released this month found that 46 percent of electric vehicle owners in the United States said that they were “very” likely to revert to owning a gas-powered vehicle next time they buy a car.
Worldwide, this figure is 29 percent. The only country higher than the U.S. was Australia, where 49 percent of electric vehicle owners said that they would reverse course. Other countries involved in the survey include Brazil, China, France, Germany, Italy and Norway (via Fox Business):
The biggest reason EV owners cited for wanting to return to owning a gas-powered vehicle was the lack of available charging infrastructure (35%); the second-highest reason cited was that the total cost of owning an EV was too high (34%). Nearly 1 in 3, 32%, said their driving patterns on long-distance trips were affected too much due to having an EV.
In an interview with Automotive News, Philipp Kampshoff, leader of the consulting firm's Center for Future Mobility, said, "I didn't expect that."
“I thought, 'Once an EV buyer, always an EV buyer,’” he added.
Over 20 percent of global respondents do not want to ever switch to an electric vehicle.
In 2022, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) unveiled a rule that established a timeline so that by 2035, all new vehicles sold in the state would be zero-emission.