The deals have also helped fuel an aggressive price war as market leader Tesla tries to defend market share. This has helped boost sales, but also lowered the cost of used electric vehicles.
Jessica Caldwell, head of insights at Edmunds, said that with more people shopping around due to the rising cost of car ownership, the heavily discounted used models flooding the market will likely act as a “gateway” to home ownership.
Average US gasoline prices this week topped $4 a gallon for the first time since 2022 following Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine, and the average purchase price of a new car is near a record high. Analysts attribute sluggish overall sales in the first quarter of this year in part to rising affordability concerns.
Against that background, Duncan Aldred, president of GM’s North American business, said at an auto forum in New York this week that the Detroit auto giant has seen “a bit of a spike in interest” among buyers in electric vehicles over the past month.
However, analysts said it was too early to predict whether higher gasoline prices would translate into a meaningful boost in sales of new electric vehicles, citing lingering concerns among mainstream consumers about being able to take long trips in a large country with inadequate charging infrastructure.
Manufacturers including Ford and GM have announced plans for a new generation of more affordable EVs that will go on sale in the next few years. Meanwhile, Caldwell said buyers are surprised at how much their used electric models have improved since the last time they shopped.
“In 2022, the last time we saw a gas price increase, they would have been looking at cars from 2019, when EVs weren’t there yet,” he said.
Mike Murphy, co-founder of the lobby group EVs For All America, added that many of the barriers to EV adoption are quietly being removed, noting that the build-out of electric power infrastructure in the U.S. accelerated last year despite a decline in EV sales.
“The dream of mass EV adoption in America is not dead yet,” he said.
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