How much of this is due to a high level of pre-purchase excitement followed by buyer's remorse? Anecdotally, I know several people who were gung ho about getting an EV, fully willing to pay its cost premium, who initially loved their EVs but sold them within a year or two after encountering issues that only become apparent with semi-long-term ownership:

— In the US, charging infrastructure is still quite poor, with a high amount of disabled or damaged chargers that aren't apparent on maps. Nothing worse than planning a route around the only charger within a few dozen miles and arriving to find it broken. The overall overhead of having to plan driving/parking around chargers is also too onerous for some people.

— Similarly, people underestimate how much harder long road trips are on EVs, especially when fast chargers are damaged and don't actually supply anywhere close to the advertised amount of current.

— People underestimate how much range degrades in cold weather. One person I know bought their EV in the spring, loved it until winter came around, and then promptly sold it the next spring. In a similar vein, people don't realize how poor and battery-hungry climate control can be in an EV, especially in models without a heat pump.

It would be interesting to rigorously study this, examining whether people buying EVs are more likely to sell them within the first couple years of ownership versus people buying comparably priced ICE cars.

From personal experience over ~6 years of EV roadtrips, the first two really aren't much of a problem with a Tesla or a vehicle that can access Tesla's network.

Other chargers can definitely be a bit more hit-and-miss although they are improving.

These days if you stick to the big networks (Tesla, Electrify America, Rivian, IONNA, etc.) you're going to have a pretty good time. The one-off chargers in municipal parking garages are a different story, I don't really on those unless there is a recent PlugShare review showing that it actually works.

> charging infrastructure is still quite poor

Now that basically every car can access Tesla Superchargers and vice versa for Teslas, this is really not a problem anymore. We’re at the « sometimes I’m grumpy the best stop for my car does not have the exact amenities I want » stage now.

I guess is worse than the « the stop with the exact amnenities I want is not the provider with the cheapest electricity that I wanted » stage that we are in say, France.

> especially in models without a heat pump.

Oh for- who the fuck is putting resistive heating in an EV?! What brain-dead PM greenlit that pants-on-head jackassery? Was it GM? I can see an American OEM getting that close to the goal line only to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Really though, that's just disappointing; I had earnestly assumed every EV that made it to market (in North America at least) would be using a heat pump.