Too bad they aren’t more accessable.
Do you have an EV?
This month, we are plugging the American Red Cross! Even if you can’t give blood, there are many other ways to help out. Visit https://www.redcross.org/ to find out how!
https://www.usatoday.com/story/cars/shopping/evs/2026/09/25/states-most-evs-2026/91940418007
https://www.npr.org/2026/09/30/nx-s1-5979915/ev-hybrid-sales-2026-federal-tax-credit
The Marketing Gateway is a weekly podcast hosted by Sean in St. Louis (Sean J. Jordan, President of https://www.researchplan.com/) and featuring guests from the St. Louis area and beyond.
Every week, Sean shares insights about the world of marketing and speaks to people who are working in various marketing roles – creative agencies, brand managers, MarCom professionals, PR pros, business owners, academics, entrepreneurs, researchers and more!
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TRANSCRIPT:
I was reading about Toyota recently and how they’re feeling vindicated by the decisions they made about getting into the electric car market.
But not for the reasons you might expect. Toyota, which is the largest automaker in the world, has actually been very hesitant to get into making electric cars and only recently dipped its toe in the waters while rivals like Nissan, Hyundai and Chevrolet have all been producing electric cars for years.
And this is surprising, because Toyota was one of the first to market when it came to introducing hybrid cars that utilize batteries charged by the gas-powered internal combustion engine during wasteful activities like braking or coasting and then use those batteries to power a second electric engine that takes the load off the gas-powered engine.
The result is greater fuel efficiency, less frequent maintenance and surprisingly fast acceleration since the electric engine is so capable.
Toyota is definitely sold on hybrids, and they even produce plug-in hybrids where you can pre-charge an even larger battery at home or at a public charging station and drive most of your miles on electric, with the gas engine only kicking in to mostly take over when you’re low on juice.
Plug-in hybrids solve one of the biggest problems for electric cars – range.
But electric cars have gotten a lot better over the years and many can go 200-300 miles on a single charge. And most people drive around 40-50 miles a day at most.
With gas prices being astronomical and electric cars being pretty affordable, you’d think that they’d be a booming market.
But no, Toyota was right, when it comes to the United States, at least, because electric vehicles are less popular now than they were a few years ago, and while it’s estimated that a third of Americans will eventually drive one by the year 2030, consumers in general are showing very little interest at the moment.
So why are electric cars faring so badly? Let’s take a look.
I’m Sean in St. Louis, and this is the Marketing Gateway.
Electric cars have been around a lot longer than you may realize, and some of the earliest motor vehicles were actually driven by steam engines that provided electricity for power.
The problem has long been that battery technology wasn’t up to the task of storing electrical charges big enough to move a car, but not because moving people is necessarily the problem – golf carts have been doing it just fine for decades!
No, the problem is that cars are really heavy and durable for safety and comfort reasons, which limits their range if they’re powered by an electric battery, and thus gas-powered internal combustion engines have long been preferred my manufacturers and consumers alike because they allow for a long range, decent power and relatively inexpensive fuel sources.
At least, when we’re not bombing Iran and fighting over major shipping lanes. But we won’t go there today.
Electric vehicles, or EVs, are one solution to the problem of fossil fuel powered vehicles and they’re good for a lot of reasons. The engines only operate when you’re accelerating, they’re quiet, there are no emissions to worry about, they’re easily recharged through inexpensive electricity as opposed to gasoline you have to haul around with you in a tank and they also tend to last a good long time because there’s less wear and tear on the engine.
For most drivers, they’re honestly the best choice since most people only drive locally and a single charge is more than enough to cover all the miles they’re driving in a day.
But the tradeoff is range, If you want to, say, drive to Chicago from St. Louis, you’ll be stopping at least once to charge along the way and then probably again once or twice before you come home. While there are charging stations along every major corridor, they add to your time in transit and aren’t always reliable.
Tesla Supercharger stations are the best of the bunch, but only some of them are set up to work with non-Tesla EVs.
And Tesla is, shall we say, a tarnished brand. They make some of the best electric cars, but they’re also heavily associated with Elon Musk and have a pretty concerning safety record, especially with the oft-mocked Cybertruck.
And you know, I thought the Cybertruck was the least appealing-looking car I’d ever seen in my life, and then I saw a Cybertaxi one day, which is somehow even less appealing.
So, Tesla isn’t for everyone. But you know, there are literally dozens of other choices, from an electric Mini Cooper to an electric Ford F150 truck to a fully electric Hummer SUV. I’m really not making that up, either – the king of the gas guzzlers, now electric! What a world we live in.
But even with all the choices, sales of electric vehicles have been dropping off since last year’s high of 11.4% of car buyers rushing out to buy EVs.
We’re now down to about 5-6% of buyers, which is where we were in 2022 before the Inflation Reduction Act kicked in and expanded EV tax credits to a wider group of buyers. The reason for last year’s spike was because those tax credits were about to expire.
And they were generous! You could save tens of thousands of dollars on a new EV.
Now, you can get a lot of them used for $15-25,000 with not that many miles on them. My wife and I were looking – she really wants an EV – and there are an amazing number of choices out there. You’re maybe paying a premium for electric compared to some of the cheaper gas-powered cars, but remember – these are way cheaper to fuel and they break down a lot less often.
And that begs the question – if that’s the case, why aren’t these vehicles more popular?
After reading quite a few pieces about this, I’ve determined it really has to do with three things.
The first, and I cannot emphasize the importance of this enough, is due to consumer momentum. Buying cars is an occasional behavior for most people and they generally are going to buy vehicles that suit their current lifestyle. Sports cars, sedans or trucks when they’re young, Minivans or SUVs when they have kids, flashy cars when they hit their midlife crisis and then safer, more sensible cars – perhaps with a touch of luxury – when they get older.
This is not controversial, by the way. We call this the stages of life model. And it’s modified by there being certain lifestyles that demand certain types of vehicles.
Some people are more concerned about how their vehicles affect their lifestyles so they’ll buy things like offroad-capable cars or big trucks.
Other people are more concerned about status and they’ll buy or lease luxury vehicles for appearances.
And other people, like myself, just really hate wasting time gassing up multiple times a week during their commute and buy fuel-efficient cars with the side benefit of being better for the environment.
Electric cars tend to appeal most to people who don’t mind a little bit of hassle to put up with the benefits. If you don’t drive the maximum range every day and you can charge your car at home, it’s easy! Or if you have chargers at work or don’t mind visiting a charging station, no big deal. And hey, you save money on gas and don’t pollute with engine emissions or oil leaks.
Aside from the environmentally-conscious and the efficiency crowd, though, who are electric cars really for? They don’t fit neatly into a stage of life and they really are being touted as an alternative to existing cars, not a brand new category.
That brings us to the second point, which is what Tesla figured out really early on. If you drive an electric car, it ought to be something that does make you special, and that’s why Tesla was so successful separating their cars out from the traditional model.
Teslas initially weren’t sold through dealerships, they had cool features other cars didn’t have and they were able to accelerate insanely fast due to their all-electric engines. And the company kept adding upgrades and new features through software upgrades.
To the tech crowd, that was really cool! And you can guess who Tesla’s target market was. The trendy, innovative, tech-focused folks with the disposable income available to pay the Tesla Tax of spending twice what they’d spend on a cheaper EV to get a Tesla.
But then Tesla’s brand got tarnished. People used to be excited about driving Teslas, but now a lot of Tesla owners are sort of embarrassed by the brand, and it’s all because of Elon Musk’s antics and the ridiculous launch of the Cybertruck.
Tesla’s poor safety record and lack of accountability and eroding public trust have also hurt the brand.
That put a real damper on the flagship brand of the electric vehicle market, and it hurt the entire category as a result.
Meanwhile, aside from a few high-end brands like Rivian and Polestar, most of the electric cars are just alternatives to existing models, but with a higher price tag. That’s not exciting nor special. It’s just more expensive, hopefully offset by paying less for energy in the long run.
And that brings me to point #3 – the only way to really see good cost savings with an EV is if you live in a place with the right infrastructure. If you own a home with a garage and you can afford to install a 240V rapid charging station, electric cars aren’t going to be too bad for you, especially if you can do off-peak charging overnight.
And if you have solar panels and can offset the electric cost further, all the better!
That’s the best-case scenario. But what if you have an apartment or live in a townhome without a garage or easy access to outdoor charging? You’ll have to run an extension cord and opt for slow charging, which is not ideal in inclement weather.
Or you’ll have to use a public charging station, which are often not convenient, comparatively expensive and potentially full of other cars, forcing you to wait your turn.
Tesla Superchargers, by the way, can cost you as much or more than actual gas if you’re not driving a Tesla due to congestion fees and non-Tesla monthly subscription fees. And even then, only nine models outside of Teslas are supported. Even with a Tesla, a Model Y usually costs about $30-40 to fully recharge at peak rates.
At home, however, your electric costs are a lot cheaper. If your EV can go 250 miles, which is on the upper end, it may cost you between $10-20 to fully recharge. Gas for a similar car would run you at least $40-50 at current rates.
And so EVs are well-suited to people who live in single family housing and are using their cars for local driving with occasionally longer trips, but they’re lousy for anyone else.
One solution that’s been floated is to get rid of the ownership option altogether in dense suburban and urban areas and just make EVs available to rent on demand through services like Zipcar, similar to how you can rent bikes or electric scooters already via apps.
That would eliminate a lot of the problems with owning EVs since the company that owns the vehicles could be responsible for charging them and build that into the cost.
But the alternative is ridesharing services like Uber and Lyft, which are already providing on-demand rides without any of the inconvenience or liability of renting a car to drive yourself.
These three hurdles are pretty significant, and that’s why, as of this point in 2026, I don’t see the ownership of EVs in the United States rising from 16% to double that in the next five years, as one prominent study suggests.
But as with anything, this is all a marketing problem. And car companies have been pretty half-hearted about marketing EVs for a variety of reasons. They don’t want to devalue their own brands by cannibalizing their sales.
They don’t want to disenfranchise their dealer and repair networks and force them to adapt to a new onrush of EVs.
They don’t want to have to completely overhaul how they’re building and selling cars when they already have efficiencies in place.
And there are no real government incentives to build EVs right now, but quite a few relaxed standards on traditional gas-powered cars to encourage building traditional models instead.
So the easy answer is, “the government needs to incentivize EVs and the market will follow.”
The wrench in the gears could be fuel prices, though. As they get higher and don’t drop back down, more and more people will be looking for an escape from them over the long term. And that’s where EVs will probably have the strongest appeal.
Not as status cars, or lifestyle cars, or even luxury cars – though electric models of all of those do exist!
No, it’ll be as economic cars that are built for the mass market with the goal of keeping costs down. Family SUVs, minivans and 4-door sedans will probably be the most popular models, especially if they’re cheap and able to go a few hundred miles.
And that, I’d suggest, is where marketing will be the most effective for building interest in EVs.
And in fact, I’d recommend to Ford to focus on building a sexy new EV model of the Escape SUV and use its brand name as the rallying cry to build an EV brand on. Escaping high gas prices newer felt so plausible!
And I’ll bet it’d sell better than the Mustang Mach-E or the Ford F-150 Lightning, both of which consumers struggle to believe are as capable as their gas-powered counterparts.
We’ll see where things go in the next few years. But until then, I’d bank on hybrids to be the big sellers, because they offer great fuel efficiency, fewer limitations and plug-in versions that can be partially electric.
For those looking to save a few bucks here and there without making compromises, that middle ground is probably where consumers will be the most comfortable.
I’m Sean in St. Louis, and this has been the Marketing Gateway. See ya next time!
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