California comes closest to a success story for electric vehicle adoption, as 34% of all registered EVs in the country are in the Golden State. California also has the most EV chargers in the nation — over 200,000 are available publicly. The state has an extensive history of zero emission vehicle (ZEV) subsidies including its Clean Vehicle Rebate Project that spent $1.5 billion, a new clean vehicle rebate program approved to spend $200 million and a recently approved $1.4 billion EV infrastructure subsidy. Despite all of this, between 2014 and 2023 California’s transportation emissions have declined by only 2%.
California has made some progress compared to the national average of a mere 0.001% emissions decrease over the same period. But clearly, California’s extraordinarily ambitious electrification policies for vehicles — which includes a proposed mandate — have not elicited the sort of market shift that climate hawks want.
While bureaucrats who support increasingly unpopular subsidies are left wondering why Americans aren’t “transitioning” to EVs, there is a simple explanation: EVs are not the same as other vehicles. No amount of subsidy or regulation can change the fact that consumers have preferences, and if policymakers are serious about reducing transportation emissions, their policies ought to acknowledge reality.
Policymakers often fail to understand why people don’t just buy EVs. They can be surprisingly comparable to conventional vehicles when considering factors such as driving range, cost and convenience thanks to numerous charging options. All else being equal, one might think that people would transition to EVs if there is little functional difference, yet the data shows that they’re not making the switch.
While EV sales have fallen almost 30% since the sunset of the federal EV tax credit, overall sales are generally near all-time highs. Yet despite the high number of EVs sold, it turns out that people who own EVs don’t tend to drive them much. Two separate studies, one examining electricity usage and another looking at odometer reads, concluded that even though people have bought a lot of EVs in California, they are not driven as much as conventional vehicles. It is unclear exactly why this is, but one reason is probably charging convenience. Nearly a fifth of EV buyers end up reverting to conventional vehicles, primarily citing charging convenience as the reason.
Ultimately, the differences in the owning experience between vehicle types is a major factor in the choices of consumers. The result is that despite government support that might make it cheap for people to buy EVs, they are not replacing their conventional vehicle mileage with them. The result is that the markers of policy “success” in vehicle sales seem to be present, then motivate further central planning from state policymakers. Yet the actual emissions data shows that these policies are very costly relative to their effects.
There are two lessons here. The first is policies attempting to force consumers to do things they don’t want to do (like drive a car they don’t want to drive) is an uphill battle that becomes expensive for marginal gains.
The second is policies divorced from the intended outcome are unlikely to deliver. Policies like California’s zero emission truck voucher program don’t reduce transportation emissions; they pay companies to buy trucks. And, because the data reveals that merely owning a low emission vehicle doesn’t mean it’s getting used, these policies fail to achieve their objectives.
California is not done subsidizing EVs, though. As part of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s “California Climate Commitment,” he intends to spend $54 billion of Californians’ money on climate subsidies, including $10 billion of hoped-for spending on zero-emission vehicles. But what this EV policy failure tells us is that there’s a difference between spending a lot of money and meeting real goals. California’s lawmakers would be wise to recognize the difference, or they will continue to burden taxpayers and leave their residents worse off.Philip Rossetti is a resident senior fellow with the R Street Institute’s energy and environment program.