California PHEV Owners Return to Gas Power

by Jason R. Sakurai

Published: May 5th, 2021

california phev owners return to gas power

Electric vehicles are one way to carbon neutrality. Yet 20 percent of California PHEV owners have gone back to gas-powered vehicles.

Published in Nature Energy on April 26th by the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Davis, the study found that PHEV buyers in California were abandoning the technology at a rate of 20 percent, as were 18 percent of battery electric vehicle (BEV) owners.

According to the researchers, dissatisfaction with charging convenience, and not having level two, 240-volt charging at home, were the primary reasons.

The National Center for Sustainable Transportation (NCST) funded the analysis. The US Department of Transportation supported the University Transportation Centers program. The California Air Resources Board (CARB) paid for the questionnaire portion. They are one and the same agency that sniffs tailpipes for excess emissions.

Researchers Scott Hardman and Gil Tal had a premise: In order for EVs to be successful, it meant buyers needed to repurchase EVs. Abandoning the technology would prevent EVs from reaching 100 percent market share. They methodically surveyed California households who had purchased PEVs between 2012=2018. EVs’ success relied on adopters continuing to purchase EVs. 18 percent of EV owners and 20 percent of PHEVs were dissatisfied enough to return to gas-powered vehicles.

As noted by cnet.com, the problem centers around at-home charging. Level 2, 240-volt charging, or a lack thereof, is what led to discontent. Without the ability to recharge your EV at home, all the benefits of EV ownership go out the window. The lack of fast public chargers is a problem. Chargers that aren’t fast enough in comparison to refueling your car also diminished the EV experience.

Half the owners who bought another EV had Level 2 charging access, yet 30 percent who had access to Level 2 charging still decided against buying another EV. Their conclusion? It was pretty much even whether California PHEV owners decided to buy another EV or not. As the technology improves and charging installation is bundled with the purchase of an EV, it should help the green movement grow.

[Image: Mercedes-Benz]

#BatteryPower #BEVs #CaliforniaPHEV #Congress #EnvironmentalImpact #EVs #Green #PHEVs

Jason R. Sakurai

With a father who owned a dealership, I literally grew up in the business. After college, I worked for GM, Nissan and Mazda, writing articles for automotive enthusiast magazines as a side gig. I discovered you could make a living selling ad space at Four Wheeler magazine, before I moved on to selling TV for the National Hot Rod Association. After that, I started Roadhouse, a marketing, advertising and PR firm dedicated to the automotive, outdoor/apparel, and entertainment industries. Through the years, I continued writing, shooting, and editing. It keep things interesting.

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PandaBear on May 06, 2021

I bought one just to get on the carpool lane for free, and now that deal is over I am no longer going to buy an EV / plug in. If the price is right I might consider in the future but at the moment I like my gas car better.

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FormerFF on May 06, 2021

I have a PHEV, and my next car is going to be a gasser, because I want to do some track driving. But, I'm certainly an edge case. I may keep the PHEV to use as an additional car, because it's been such a good car and I won't get that much money for it. If I didn't want to drive on the track, I'm not sure what I'd get. EVing around town is so much nicer than driving a gasoline powered car, it would be hard to give that up, but I don't see an EV that I'd really like. Since what I have has been so reliable and cheap to run, I'd probably just keep it for a few years and see if something else I really liked came along.

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Steve S. Steve was a car guy. In his younger years he owned a couple of European cars that drained his bank account but looked great and were fun to drive while doing it. This was not a problem when he was working at a good paying job at an aerospace company that supplied the likes of Boeing and Lockheed-Martin, but after he was laid off he had to work a number of crummy temp jobs in order to keep paying the rent, and after his high-mileage BMW was totaled in an accident, he took the insurance payout and decided to get something a little less high maintenance. But what to get? A Volkswagen? Maybe a Volvo? No, he knew that the parts for those were just as expensive and they had the same reputation for spending a lot of time in the shop as any other European make. Steve was sick and tired of driving down that road."Just give me four wheels and a seat," said Steve to himself. "I'll buy something cooler later when my work situation improves".His insurance company was about to stop paying for the rental car he was driving, so he had to make a decision in a hurry. He was not really a fan of domestics but he knew that they were generally reliable and were cheap to fix when they did break, so he decided to go to the nearest dealership and throw a dart at something.On the lot was a two year old Pontiac Sunfire. It had 38,000 miles on it and was clean inside and out. It looked reasonably sporty, and Steve knew that GM had been producing the J-car for so long that they pretty much worked the bugs out of it. After taking a test drive and deciding that the Ecotec engine made adequate power he made a deal. The insurance check paid for about half of it, and he financed the rest at a decent rate which he paid off within a year.Steve's luck took a turn for the better when he was offered a job working for the federal government. It had been months since he went on the government jobs website and threw darts at job listings, so he was surprised at the offer. It was far from his dream job, and it didn't pay a lot, but it was stable and had good benefits. It was the "four wheels and a seat" of jobs. "I can do this temporarily while I find a better job", he told himself.But the year 2007 saw the worst economic crash since the Great Depression. Millions of people were losing their jobs, the housing market was in a free fall, people were declaring bankruptcy left and right, and the temporary job began to look more and more permanent. Steve didn't like his job, and he hated his supervisors, but he considered himself lucky that he was working when so many people were not. And the federal government didn't lay people off.So he settled in for the long haul. That meant keeping the Sunfire. He didn't enjoy it, but he didn't hate it either, and it did everything he asked of it without complaint.Eventually he found a way to tolerate his job too, and he built seniority while paying off his debts. There was a certain feeling of comfort and satisfaction of being debt-free, and he even began to build some savings, which was increasingly important for someone now in their forties.Another bit of luck came a few years later when Steve's landlord decided to sell the house Steve was renting, at the bottom of the housing market, and offered it to Steve for what he had in it. Steve's house was small and cramped, and he didn't really like it, but thanks to his savings and good credit he became a homeowner in an up and coming neighborhood.Fourteen years later Steve was still working that temporary job, still living in that cramped little house that he now hated, and still drove the Sunfire because it wouldn't die. For years now he dreamed of making a change, but then the pandemic happened and threw the economy and life in general into chaos. Steve weathered the pandemic, kept his job when millions of people were losing theirs, and sheltered in place in that crummy little house, with Netflix, HBO, and a dozen other streaming services keeping him company, and drove to and from work in the Sunfire because it was four wheels and a seat and that's all he needed for now.Steve's life was secure, but a kind of dullness had set in. He existed, but the fire went out; even when the pandemic ended and life returned to normal Steve's life went on as it had for years; an endless Groundhog Day of work, home, work, home. He never got his real-estate license or finished college and got his bachelor's, never got a better job, never used his passport to do some traveling in Europe. He lost interest in cars. "To think how much money I wasted on hot cars when I was younger", he said to himself. 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