I’m behind the wheel of a 2026 Chevrolet Equinox EV, one of the most affordable new electric SUVs you can buy today, about to make the first and only pit stop on my 230-mile journey from San Francisco to Reno, Nevada. It hits me that I’ve put next to no effort into planning this trip.
The last time I made the same journey, back in 2020, the modest range offered by even premium EVs and the limited charging infrastructure meant I needed to spend hours meticulously planning the route and mapping out charging stations. Still, the realities of EV roadtripping left me sweating bullets between stops.
This time, I just get in the car and hit the road, confident that the Chevy has enough range to get me where I’m going and that there will be plenty of fast, reliable charging along the way.
It’s never been easier to be an EV owner in America.
What started as a trickle of niche electric city cars — like the first-generation Nissan Leaf, widely recognized as the first mass-market production EV to hit the road in 2009 — has rapidly grown to include dozens of full-electric models of all shapes, sizes and prices. The first wave of battery-electric vehicles had its share of growing pains: short range, limited availability outside of coastal markets and few places to charge. But by 2012, Tesla had become a household name, beginning sales of its Model S and launching what would eventually become the nation’s largest EV charging network.
More competing models and networks followed, and soon, EV-curious drivers had their pick of reasonably priced, long-range models like the Hyundai Ioniq 6, rugged full-size electric SUVs like the Rivian R1S and even ultra-luxurious electric sedans like the Mercedes-Benz EQS and Rolls-Royce Specter. (And yes, the humble, budget-friendly Nissan Leaf is still around, having recently been reborn as a compact SUV.)
Dozens of automakers, global and domestic, shifted their focus toward EVs, making ambitious electrification pledges for the coming decades. By 2024, EVs had become the fastest-growing segment of the automotive industry. And yet, today, new electric vehicle sales in the US have stalled hard, falling to their lowest level since 2022, according to data from Kelley Blue Book earlier this year, even as European and Asian markets post record-breaking growth. China, in particular, has seen EVs account for up to 60% of all new vehicle sales. What’s the difference? Politics, infrastructure, cultural attitudes and so much more.
In this article:
- Trump, tariffs and the trade war
- Where EVs are thriving
- Range anxiety and renters
- America’s focus on hybrids
- Getting the EV formula right
- A satisfied EV shopper
- Ready or not, here come the EVs
And yet, despite the stall, there’s a promising road ahead.
“Americans are becoming more open to the idea of driving an EV and more confident in the infrastructure needed to support them,” Robert Fisher, senior consulting manager at the consultancy SBD Automotive, tells me.
We’re talking about the Here-SBD EV Index 2026, a newly published survey gathered in partnership with the global mapping and technology company Here. Fisher notes that even as EV adoption in the US has slowed, people are feeling more positive about being able to recharge when they’re traveling. Respondents who described the charging infrastructure as good or very good have risen to 85% in 2026 from 72% last year.
“That 85% is the highest result we got across all the countries that we surveyed. It’s really quite an impressive result,” Fisher says.
Electric vehicles are still the future of the automotive industry, whether America is ready or not.
Trump, tariffs and trade war casualties
Many experts point to the second Trump administration’s policies around EVs — chaotic at best and antagonistic at worst — as a key cause of the recent slump. Count me in that camp.
Americans considering EV options for their new car no longer have access to the Clean Vehicle Tax Credit, a federal incentive worth up to $7,500 for new electric vehicles and up to $4,000 for used ones established as part of the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 and dissolved by President Donald Trump in 2025.
Automakers, perhaps to their own detriment, relied on that built-in discount when marketing, advertising and pricing their vehicles, but policymakers at the time believed that spurring American EV growth was worth the investment. Without the incentive, the most popular EVs in the US became much more expensive to buy or lease, and even with their low cost of ownership and maintenance, the break-even point takes longer to reach.
The ongoing tariff-fueled trade war is also proving difficult for automakers to navigate. Trump’s “Liberation Day” announcement in April 2025 imposed sweeping tariffs on a wide range of goods and materials, including a 50% tax on aluminum and steel imports and a 25% tariff on foreign-made cars and auto parts. These tariffs (and the counter-tariffs that resulted) created all sorts of supply chain disruptions, making vehicles — even those manufactured domestically — more expensive to build, with the higher costs passed on to buyers at dealerships. Lacking the economies of scale of combustion-car manufacturing and requiring more expensive components, such as rare-earth metals, high-power silicon and RAM, electric vehicles are more severely affected.
“As it stands today, the tariffs’ impact cost is in the low hundreds of dollars,” Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe told the Automotive News Shift podcast in late 2025. “Now, for most of the time, it was in the thousands of dollars, and we felt that.”
EV makers are also feeling the effects of the AI data center boom, which has created a hellishly short supply of RAM, or basic computer memory, and which is driving up prices for all manner of electronics, from smartphones to game consoles and household appliances. Modern cars require a lot of memory for their connected infotainment, driver-assistance features and software-defined control systems.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has neutered federal Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards and vehicle emissions rules — a move that makes combustion-powered cars more appealing, both to manufacture and to buy — and has blocked California’s plan to phase out combustion car sales by 2035, setting a troubling precedent for states’ rights to control their own emissions and pollution policies.
The pressure on the market from both ends of the supply-demand equation has created a hostile environment, in particular for more affordable EVs, where margins are tighter. Volvo pulled its most affordable EV from US dealerships (even as that model enjoyed success abroad). Honda completely canceled its US EV program, blaming American tariffs and policies, as well as EV and fossil fuel regulations, and taking a $15.8 billion loss as it reevaluates its US strategy. For Honda’s bean counters, it was cheaper to take the L than to wade further into America’s murky EV waters.
Where EVs are thriving
Outside of the US, the story of the electric car takes a different path. In the European Union, where stricter emission standards and higher, unsubsidized petroleum prices tip the scales for both auto buyers and automakers in favor of cleaner, more efficient vehicles, the market share of electric vehicles has grown to between 24% and 41% of new car sales, depending on the country.
In China, EVs now account for around 60% of new car sales. Compare those numbers with the under 10% US EV sales share in the first quarter of 2026, and it becomes clear that we’re behind the curve. And while American policymakers have been busy protecting fossil-fueled cars, Chinese automakers have been aggressively driving down EV costs. In China, 70% of battery-electric cars sold in 2025 were cheaper than the equivalent gas-powered vehicles. This has led to the near-disappearance of combustion from China’s cheapest small-car segment.
Outside of China, emerging markets (such as Vietnam, Thailand and Latin America) have seen EV growth of 45% to 80% on the back of cheap Chinese imports. In the EU, where domestic automakers have had to compete with Chinese EVs, there are more full-electric options for buyers in the “affordable” price range (under $30,000 equivalent).
Chinese autos of all kinds, including electric vehicles, aren’t available in the US due to steep tariffs and strict regulatory bans put in place to protect domestic automotive manufacturers and to block “national security risks,” a rationale the Trump administration has applied to other product categories as well, such as drones, routers and robot vacuum cleaners.
Regulators’ cold shoulder toward the Chinese auto industry isn’t unique to the current administration; Biden quadrupled the tariff rate on Chinese EVs, initially imposed during Trump’s first presidency, from 25% to 100% (totaling 102.5% including standard auto duties) to protect domestic manufacturing. (Note: Biden’s policies came with subsidies for US manufacturing, EVs and green technologies like solar.) Polestar, an offshoot of Swedish automaker Volvo, has been banned from selling its EVs in the US due to ties to its China-based parent company, Geely.
Meanwhile, the US war on Iran and the standoff over control of the Strait of Hormuz have seriously disrupted the global oil supply, causing gas prices to skyrocket. That may have been the final impetus to hand the global EV market to China, making those affordable, high-tech EVs available outside the US even more appealing everywhere.
Today, American drivers find themselves stuck between the rock of paying hundreds of dollars more per year for gas to fuel our internal combustion vehicles and the hard place of fewer affordable EVs on the horizon for relief. Here-SBD Automotive pollsters found that 57% of US drivers said rising gas prices have influenced their interest in EVs, and more than a third of those polled would consider a Chinese EV if given the option to buy one.
“It’s a bit of a shame, I think, because the quality that we’re seeing coming out of China surpasses what we’re seeing in many of the regions,” Fisher tells me. “It’s not to say that they’re 100% better … but it does mean that we’ve got a lot of competition.”
Does that mean that if we waved a magic wand and said, “Welcome to the US, Xiaomi and BYD,” EV sales would spike? Fisher says it’s not quite so cut-and-dried: Even as some American consumers warm to the possibility of buying a vehicle built in China, a hefty 44% of respondents in the SBD-Here survey said they had no interest whatsoever.
And yet, he says: “There would be a fairly large percentage that would find that the competitive pricing could be enough to push them over the hurdle of considering a new brand they’d never heard of.”
Range anxiety and renters
A lack of infrastructure — places to charge electric cars — is one of the most commonly cited reasons why Americans have been slow to adopt them. It seems that every holiday season, some family goes viral when they couldn’t make it home for Christmas because their EV died. (Curiously, the thousands of US drivers who run out of gas every year don’t get nearly as many clicks.)
But if range anxiety remains a fear for folks who don’t drive EVs, longtime EV owners I’ve spoken to rarely express such concerns.
The EV charging network in the US is one of the brightest spots amid the current dismal state of affairs. It largely escaped the chopping block, with the Trump administration even adding stronger domestic manufacturing mandates. Data from the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation show that the number of DC fast-charging and level 2 EV charging stations has grown steadily since 2021, reaching nearly 257,000 charging points as of July 2026. Additionally, the number of charging stations in the Joint Office study marked as “temporarily unavailable” has declined since 2025, suggesting the nationwide network has become more reliable. My personal experience backs that up: I’ve run into significantly fewer broken stations over the past few years.
Much of this growth can be attributed to Tesla building out its Supercharger network, which recently opened access to EVs from various makes that support (or can adapt to) its North American Charging Standard, or NACS. On its own, Tesla operates over 3,000 Supercharger stations across the US with more than 37,000 individual charging ports. But Tesla isn’t the only energy company growing its network despite softening sales.
Ionna — a joint venture founded by a board of eight EV automakers — has begun rapidly expanding its network of high-speed DC fast chargers, joining the likes of Electrify America, EVgo and even traditional gas station networks in adding fast charging in cities and along highways.
“Irrespective of how many EVs get sold between now and 2030, electric is definitely part of the equation,” Ionna CEO Seth Cutler tells me at a coffee shop next to one of the venture’s new San Francisco Rechargery stations. “Even if electric car sales drop to zero this year, next year or beyond, which they won’t … I think we can help unlock that market for consumers who are on the fence.”
The average charging speed for new EVs and charging points has also improved significantly over my decade-plus of testing. I rarely have to wait to charge, and when I do, it’s only a few minutes during peak demand. More stations — like the Rechargery I stopped at in Sacramento on my return from Reno — can accept a simple credit card tap, so I’m less dependent on logging into half a dozen charging network apps, and the charging experience inches closer to the familiar ease of a gas station.
I’m not the only one who’s noticed the improvements. In the Here-SBD EV index survey, 47% of respondents reported a positive perception of public charging availability (up from just 28% last year), and 60% “expressed confidence in the country’s ability to develop the infrastructure needed for greater EV adoption.”
Public charging is only part of the picture. The ability to charge at home is one of the electric car’s best (and oft-overlooked) superpowers. Plugging in when your car would be parked and idle anyway eliminates the inconvenience of EVs taking longer to fill up than gas. Plus, charging at night while you sleep is typically less expensive than public charging, thanks to lower off-peak energy rates and, in some cases, utilities or local municipalities offering incentives for charging hardware, rate plans, battery storage and more.
But around 35% of American households are renters, with the lion’s share living in multifamily apartment buildings, often without dedicated garage or driveway space for EV charging. That’s a significant number of drivers, many of them lower-income, who are unable to take advantage of one of the key EV benefits.
I spoke with Oakland, California-based green energy advocacy group Grid Alternatives about what it calls the “renter’s penalty.” Relying on public and DC fast-charging stations, EV owners who rent often end up paying six times more for charging than homeowners do — less expensive than gas, but pricier than even peak home energy rates. That difference delays the EV break-even point and acts as a sort of wealth check, keeping low-income and middle-class households, who stand to benefit most, from going electric.
“I think the dream scenario for everybody is dirt-cheap transportation fuel while they sleep,” Zach Franklin, strategic impact officer at Grid Alternatives, tells me.
Grid Alternatives works with utilities, landowners and electricity providers across the US, Puerto Rico, tribal lands and Mexico to redesign equitable EV charging for all EV drivers, including renters, residents of multifamily affordable housing communities, rideshare drivers and low-income homeowners.
Possible solutions outlined in its Utility Playbook include vouchers or prepaid charging cards for low-income families, building out municipal charging as an alternative to private networks with pricing closer to at-home off-peak rates, and working with housing and city planners to make sure multifamily communities are built (or can be upgraded) with enough charging for residents. As a customer, you can contact your local utility, ask them what programs they have to make the cheapest charging available to everybody and tell them that’s something you want.
For me, a renter, this hits close to home. I wasn’t able to overcome the challenges of setting up home EV charging where I live. I’m lucky enough to have a garage, but I was quoted hundreds of dollars to upgrade my townhome to accommodate a 48-amp, Level 2 charger. Not wanting to invest that much dough into a place I don’t own, I came away with a less-than-ideal (and much slower) setup, leaving me fairly reliant on the Electrify America and Tesla Superchargers in my neighborhood. They’re fast and reliable stations, and their proximity to grocery stores and restaurants means I can avoid sitting in the charging car for 40 minutes, but it still smarts knowing I’m paying so much more than I would at home.
America‘s focus on hybrids
Even at peak demand, EVs were just a single-digit percentage of the total US new automotive market.
American buyers still favor large trucks and full-size SUVs — classes that, until recently, have been harder to electrify due to their large, expensive batteries. That’s a cultural preference that’s unlikely to change. Cost per kilowatt-hour for EV batteries has fallen, but not fast enough, and the sort of activities truck and SUV owners aspire to — towing, hauling and off-roading, for example — tend to deplete energy reserves at an accelerated rate, so automakers outfit these gargantuan EVs with expensive oversized batteries and exaggerated base cruising range to compensate, which is why a GMC Sierra EV is priced at $65,000 to over $100,000. In comparison, the gasoline variant starts at around $38,000 and goes up to $73,000.
Unsure about the future of EVs and feeling the pressure of high fuel prices, American drivers rediscovered the missing link between combustion and full-electric vehicles: hybrids. Data published this year from Cox Automotive found that 56% of surveyed shoppers said rising gas prices and uncertainty around battery-electric vehicles have made them more likely to consider a hybrid or plug-in hybrid as their next car. Hybrid cars sidestep drivers’ unfamiliarity with charging infrastructure and bypass questions and the cost of installing home charging. They’re a more fuel-efficient version of the combustion cars Americans are familiar with, with no need to change established gas-station fill-up rituals.
Today, there are 49 hybrid models to choose from, several of which are exclusively hybrids, with the average hybrid premium being only around $1,300 to $3,000 versus a conventional combustion car. (Include plug-in hybrids in the mix, and the list of options grows to around 100 models.) About half of the list belongs to Toyota, which began shifting all of its “core models” to hybrid only in 2023. Across the industry, dealers have sold 82% more HEVs than in 2023, with gas-electric hybrids now accounting for a record 14.1% share of new car sales.
This unexpected surge in hybrid demand has sent automakers scrambling to build HEV and PHEV cars, with 25 to 30 new or heavily redesigned HEV models announced for US markets between 2027 and 2030. On the other hand, EV shoppers have just over 50 battery-electric models to choose from. Still, about half a dozen of those models are slated to be phased out by the end of this year, and a large portion of that list consists of premium and luxury makes with higher-than-average starting prices.
Getting the EV formula right
Here’s some good news for EV buyers looking for a deal: Automakers, while refocusing on hybrid vehicles today, are still trying to get the formula for tomorrow’s American EVs right.
Every automaker I’ve spoken with says that EVs are the future and has some sort of zero-emissions plan for its fleet. The dates shift, and CEOs don’t want to leave this quarter’s sales on the table, so many hedge their bets with new hybrids to placate US demand and talk of “right vehicle for the right market,” but it’s clear they see the writing on the wall.
Over the long term, more affordable EVs are on the horizon.
For EV-only automakers like Rivian and Lucid, the mainstreaming of electric cars is a sink-or-swim proposition, so they’re more invested and aggressive in this space than traditional American automakers. Rivian’s new R2, which I recently tested and loved, is an excellent and fairly affordable midsize SUV. With a $58,000 price tag, the R2 is around half the price of Rivian’s R1S, but it’s still pricey relative to the Toyota RAV4 Hybrid, which runs around $32,000 to $44,000. Cheaper R2 specs are on the way for buyers willing to wait — expected to get as low as $44,990 when the single-motor base model launches in late 2027 — and will be a huge step forward for the brand’s volume/large-scale ambitions.
Ford, after taking a big step back on the F-150 Lightning and Mustang Mach-E, is gearing up to return with its upcoming affordable EV. GM has seen the most success of the Detroit Three, with a full EV range spanning affordable small SUVs, big three-rows, luxury models and pickups. The only segments not served are sedans and vans, but they’re now the smallest segments in the US overall anyway. Toyota has been slow to enter the EV market, but is finally arriving with the affordable BZ and CH-R. Subaru’s Solterra, Trailseeker and Uncharted are also all excellent daily drivers, being mechanically identical to the Toyotas and manufactured alongside them at the same factories. And small, cheap electric trucks (around $30,000) from Slate and Telo are scheduled to arrive next year.
Automakers, not limited to developing for the US, continue to develop battery-electric technology outside the nation. Battery price per kWh continues to fall globally, regardless of any individual country’s politics. Carbon dioxide emissions restrictions in the EU and China likely won’t be relaxed once they’re ratcheted down, and automakers are still working on affordable, functional EVs for global markets. This level of capital and R&D commitment is a 5- to 7-year platform bet already sunk into EV architecture. Despite course-correcting in response to US demand, those investments aren’t easily reversed. German and Korean brands seem to be full steam ahead on electrification globally — so even models that don’t come to the US today could return when policies and administrations change.
Buyers looking to make the switch to an EV today may find the best deals already have a few miles on the odometer. The initial boom in incentive-driven EV sales, kick-started by the Clean Vehicle Tax Credit, is making its way back into preowned fleets, inflating dealers’ stock with low-mileage used EVs.
In the short term, the current crop of EVs that have escaped the belt-tightening tends to be premium. There are a variety of reasons for this, as more affluent homeowners are less sensitive to price fluctuations in already premium-priced luxury items and can pay more for more efficient, more powerful and high-tech vehicles. These buyers are also more likely to see the cost/ability to install a personal EV charger as a home investment rather than an unexpected cost. It helps that bigger-ticket models have better margins for automakers.
This overrepresentation of premium, luxury and ultra-luxury models has the unfortunate effect of pulling up the average transaction price for EVs (roughly $56,000) and the average upfront price premium versus gas, which is between $5,000 and $12,000, though this gap is closing rapidly.
“There is a huge car industry that’s working on making these cars more affordable — making it so there are now used EVs that people can afford that are high quality,” Grid Alternatives’ Franklin tells me. “I would call [it] a tipping point.”
Meanwhile, lessees are finding that the buyout price negotiated on their shiny new EV two to three years ago is higher than the car’s value at the end of their lease, so those off-lease vehicles are also reentering the preowned pool. Used EV sales have nearly tripled since early 2023 on the back of this dealer’s stock surge.
A satisfied EV shopper
Their loss is proving to be a gain for thrifty EV shoppers looking to save money, like my friend Mike M., a logistics manager in Northern California. He tested the waters last year with his family’s first EV — a Honda Prologue EV lease deal taken advantage of just before the federal incentives ended.
“I knew a lease wasn’t the best financial option, but we had never owned an EV before. We had concerns about it — what charging it would be like, etcetera,” Mike tells me via text. “We loved the vehicle, but we were new to EVs. After a few months of not having to go to the gas station, installing a house charger and getting used to weekly charge routines and how to supercharge on road trips, we got over our fears. We realized the car was awesome: no oil changes, way less maintenance and no time at the gas station every week.”
Satisfied, Mike began to look at what it would take to make the lease a permanent addition to his family’s garage.
“Once we knew we wanted the car, we started looking into the purchase price and realized that all these people turning in their leases early gave us the chance to buy a car with fewer than 5,000 miles at a better price than the residual quoted on the lease,” he says. “It was a no-brainer.”
Such a no-brainer that he picked up a used, post-lease Prologue for himself, then convinced his parents to go electric with the same deal. Last month, he signed paperwork for his family’s fourth Prologue, another lease-return preowned example to replace his wife’s at the end of its lease.
Beyond privately owned cars, the electric car’s future is getting a boost from the arrival of autonomous cars and robotaxis, such as those currently being deployed by Waymo, Zoox and Tesla in US cities. While it’s possible to build combustion-powered autonomous vehicles, no automakers or tech companies that I’ve met are doing it. Self-driving is difficult enough without a combustion engine and transmission adding noise to the equation.
Developers tell me that the inherent advantages of EVs — from their large battery packs that can pull double-duty powering the massive compute and sensor suites that autonomous vehicles require to the deeply integrated and precise powertrain and control systems — mean losing the tailpipe is basically a prerequisite for getting rid of the steering wheel.
Ready or not, here come the EVs
My Reno road trip was, in many ways, a microcosm of the broader US EV landscape: significantly better than before, even if I did run into a few small snags. The mostly uphill journey was an efficiency challenge, but the Chevy Equinox’s 319 miles of EPA-estimated range proved more than up to the task. Along the way, I encountered more EVs sharing the road, and so many more charging stations dotting the route than I did just six years ago.
Yes, I ran into a delay caused almost completely by my overconfidence and lack of basic planning. That first charging stop suggested by the navigation turned out to be an older truck stop Supercharger in Soda Springs, California. It was incompatible with third-party EVs, so I relocated to a nearby Electrify America station that was crowded with waiting locals and no obviously organized queue.
Impatient, I found a newer bank of Tesla Superchargers (with a dozen open bays confirmed in the app to support the Chevrolet with an adapter) at the next exit in nearby Truckee. After updating my credit card information in the app, I was eating lunch at a local restaurant while the EV quickly charged.
All said, my hubris cost me only about 30 minutes and a bit of checking the apps for nearby chargers — a minor annoyance, but one that was completely my own doing. I can see how, for an EV newbie unfamiliar with multiple charging networks (or someone arriving at that first station running on fumes), that could have been a stressful situation. However, given how many stations were available in the area, I’m still confident that most drivers would have a satisfying experience with just a bit of forethought. Plus, my return journey was completely smooth.
Charging infrastructure and battery technology are rapidly approaching the point where range anxiety is a thing of the past. Much work is being done to make electric cars and the electricity that powers them more affordable. The used EV market is maturing, unlocking access to the tech for Americans of all walks of life. US EV market share may have fallen behind the rest of the world, but there’s still progress to be found if you look beyond politics and new-car sales figures.
Almost every expert, automaker and driver I’ve spoken with agrees: The last year has been rough for new EV sales — maybe even a bit demoralizing — but slowing down isn’t the same as stopping.
“Cost is coming down, range is going up and charging speed is going up. It’s going to happen,” Ionna CEO Cutler tells me. “I’m pretty confident that electric will become a big part of the future.”
EVs are the future, whether America is ready for it or not. Despite taking a few steps back, we are ready to keep moving forward.
Visual Designer | Cole Kan
Art Director | Jeffrey Hazelwood
Creative Director | Viva Tung
Video Hosted and Shot by | Antuan Goodwin
Video Editing | Antuan Goodwin, JD Christison
Project Manager | Danielle Ramirez
Editor | Corinne Reichert
Director of Content | Jonathan Skillings
