Suggested Citation:
Kurani, Kenneth S., Sina Nordhoff, Scott Hardman (2025)

Consumer Resistance to Electric Vehicles: Getting to 100 Percent Zero Emission New Car Sales

. Institute of Transportation Studies, University of California, Davis, Research Report UCD-ITS-RR-25-14

Abstract:

Meeting and sustaining a requirement that 100 percent of new passenger vehicle and light-duty truck sales be zero emission vehicles (ZEVs) requires everyone who acquires a new vehicle to only acquire ZEVs. This puts an onus on understanding resistance to ZEVs: who is resistant and why. These questions are addressed using survey data from repeated cross-sectional samples of all-car buying households in California in the years 2017, 2019, and 2021. Concepts of resistance are introduced and provisionally mapped onto Consideration, a multidimensional assessment of what consumers have already done vis-à-vis two types of ZEVs: battery and fuel cell electric vehicles (BEVs and FCEVs). Results indicate that active consumer resistance did not abate for BEVs over the study period, and that while it did abate slightly for FCEVs the probability of active resistance became less dependent on assessments of FCEV performance, fuel availability, or comparisons to conventional gasoline-fueled vehicles. Resistance based in political beliefs is extended from ZEVs to thepolicy requiring ZEVs using data from an additional survey of car-owning households in California from late 2023 to early 2024. The attitude that cost and convenience matter more in daily decisions than do environmental effects has a strong influence on the likeliness of disagreeing with the ZEV sales requirement. Conceptual shortcomings are noted in the mapping of resistance onto Consideration which limit the usefulness of Consideration as proxy for resistances going forward as is the lack direct measures of political affiliation in the extension to resistance to policy. A comprehensive set of suggestions to improve the direct measurement of different forms of resistance is provided.