Electric vehicle sales in the United States hit record numbers in 2025, yet a striking share of American drivers say they still aren’t ready to give up gasoline. That tension between rising adoption and persistent skepticism defines the current car market and points toward a transition that will be slower, messier and more hybrid-heavy than many forecasters once predicted.
Surveys, ownership studies and shifting government policy all tell the same story: EVs are growing, but the internal combustion engine is far from finished.
Most American drivers still prefer gasoline
The numbers are hard to dismiss. AAA’s 2025 annual EV survey, published in June 2025, found that the share of U.S. drivers who said they were likely to buy an EV fell from 23% the previous year to 18%, while those who said they were unlikely rose from 25% to 32%. Fewer respondents believed EVs would eventually make up half the vehicles on the road, with that figure dropping from 44% to 39%.
Cost and convenience topped the list of concerns. Respondents told AAA that charging remains too slow, too unreliable or too hard to find, especially outside major metro areas. Despite a growing number of public chargers funded in part by the federal National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program, many drivers said the network still falls short of what they’d need to feel comfortable going electric.
Those findings align with broader consumer sentiment research. A 2025 survey of more than 2,000 U.S. drivers, conducted by the automotive research firm AutoPacific, found that high repair costs, expensive insurance premiums and battery range anxiety were the top reasons Americans cited for avoiding EVs. For shoppers who have never sat behind the wheel of an electric car, those concerns often outweigh arguments about lower fuel and maintenance costs over time.
Nearly half of current EV owners have second thoughts
Perhaps more telling than what non-owners think is what current EV drivers say. A McKinsey & Company global mobility survey of nearly 37,000 drivers, published in 2025, found that 46% of EV owners in the United States said they were likely to switch back to a gasoline vehicle for their next purchase. That figure was higher than in China (22%) and roughly on par with Australia.
The reasons were practical, not ideological. According to E&E News reporting on the McKinsey data, owners pointed to inadequate public charging, higher-than-expected ownership costs and frustration with long road-trip planning. A NewsNation analysis of the same dataset noted that 35% of dissatisfied owners specifically blamed charging infrastructure, while 29% cited repair bills or reliability concerns.
The picture isn’t uniformly negative. Drivers who lease battery-electric vehicles report some of the highest satisfaction rates in the auto industry. J.D. Power’s 2025 U.S. Electric Vehicle Experience Study found that BEV lessees overwhelmingly said they would choose another electric vehicle, driven largely by performance, quiet cabins and low day-to-day running costs. The gap between happy lessees and frustrated owners suggests that how people acquire and use EVs matters as much as the technology itself.
Charging gaps remain the core obstacle
Public charging infrastructure has expanded significantly since 2022, but the pace hasn’t matched driver expectations. As of early 2026, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Alternative Fuels Station Locator lists more than 190,000 public charging ports nationwide, yet many are Level 2 chargers that take hours to deliver a meaningful range boost. DC fast chargers, which can add 100 miles or more in 20 to 30 minutes, remain concentrated along interstate corridors and in coastal metro areas.
Rural and suburban drivers feel the gap most acutely. AAA’s 2025 survey found that charging anxiety is highest among drivers in the South and Midwest, where stations are spaced farther apart and electricity grids vary in reliability. For a household that regularly drives 300 or more miles in a day for work or family obligations, the math on charging stops still doesn’t pencil out the way a five-minute gas fill-up does.
Reliability is another sore point. Industry data from the charging network operator Electrify America and independent audits by groups like PlugShare have shown that a meaningful percentage of public chargers are offline or malfunctioning at any given time. That inconsistency erodes trust, especially among first-time EV buyers who don’t yet have the habit of charging at home overnight.
Depreciation and repair costs fuel hesitation
Financial anxiety extends well beyond the sticker price. Industry analysts at iSeeCars and Recurrent Auto have documented that many electric models depreciate faster than their gasoline equivalents in the first three years of ownership, partly because rapid improvements in battery technology and new model launches can make older EVs feel outdated quickly.
Repair costs compound the problem. EV collision repairs tend to be more expensive than comparable work on gas cars, according to data from CCC Intelligent Solutions, a major insurance industry analytics firm. Specialized labor, scarce parts and the complexity of high-voltage battery packs all drive up bills. Insurance premiums have followed: a 2025 Bankrate analysis found that EV insurance costs roughly 25% more on average than coverage for a similar gas-powered sedan.
For drivers weighing a purchase, those ownership costs can overshadow the savings on fuel. Total cost of ownership calculators from the Department of Energy show that many EVs do break even or save money over five to seven years, but that math requires assumptions about electricity rates, driving habits and maintenance that not every buyer finds convincing.
Policy shifts add uncertainty
Government policy, once a tailwind for EV adoption, has become a source of confusion. The Biden administration’s EPA finalized aggressive tailpipe emissions rules in 2024 that were projected to push EV sales toward roughly two-thirds of new car purchases by 2032. But after President Trump took office in January 2025, his administration moved to roll back those standards, calling them unrealistic and harmful to American automakers.
Congressional Republicans have echoed that stance. Rep. Tim Walberg of Michigan and other House members have argued that the federal government should not be mandating a shift to electric vehicles when the charging network and electrical grid aren’t ready to support it. That political resistance resonates with drivers who already feel uneasy about being pushed toward a technology they haven’t chosen on their own terms.
At the state level, the picture is fragmented. California and more than a dozen states that follow its emissions framework are still pursuing aggressive EV sales targets, while other states have no EV-specific mandates at all. The result is a patchwork that leaves automakers guessing about which vehicles to build and in what volumes.
A slower, more hybrid-heavy transition
The most likely near-term outcome isn’t a binary choice between gas and electric. It’s a market where hybrids and plug-in hybrids absorb much of the growth that pure EVs were once expected to capture.
Toyota, which long resisted a full pivot to battery-electric vehicles, has seen surging demand for its hybrid lineup. Ford, GM and Stellantis have all expanded hybrid offerings after acknowledging that consumer appetite for plug-in models is growing faster than for full EVs. S&P Global Mobility projected in late 2025 that hybrids and plug-in hybrids could account for roughly 25% of U.S. new vehicle sales by 2028, up from about 11% in 2024.
Pure battery-electric vehicles will continue to grow, especially as prices fall and charging networks mature. BloombergNEF’s 2025 Electric Vehicle Outlook still forecasts that EVs will make up the majority of global new car sales by the mid-2030s. But in the United States, where driving distances are long, vehicle preferences skew toward trucks and SUVs, and political headwinds are real, the path will be bumpier than in China or Northern Europe.
For now, the American car market is doing what it usually does: hedging. Drivers want cleaner options, but they also want convenience, affordability and the freedom to refuel in five minutes on a road trip. Until EVs can reliably deliver all of that, gasoline and hybrid powertrains will remain a central part of the landscape.
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