Some richer people buy EVs without incentives. Most people can't with how expensive they are upfront. Same with solar panels.

Enthusiasts (and occasionally virtue signalers) buy EVs without incentives. Average person doesn't want to pay extra for an EV.

car companies have been telling people what their preferences are the whole time.

This IMO holds true for some other things going on in the car industry. The annoying large touch screens in particular. But not people wanting ICE vehicles which tend to be more affordable

Why is it that electric cars have to be weird, ridiculously high performance, or both?

I don't want strange controls, I don't want virtual door handles, I don't want a cab full of computer screens, I don't want bizarre styling, and I honestly don't want a 250mph 0-60 in 0.2 seconds hypercar. Give me a car that looks and acts normally but has an electric powertrain so that I can plug it in at home rather than having to go to a gas station all the time.

I think it's less about aversion to EVs and more about aversion to the $100,000 price tag.

If that thing is $50k, I think sales at least stay even, if not pick up.

I also think that PHEVs are great for all the rurals. Especially if they keep the ICE fairly powerful. Just tell people "for your grocery run to town you don't need any fuel, but to get to the next town over you can just hoon the ecoboost. Or fuck it, build a V8 diesel PHEV. Nothing stopping them from doing it, it's not like F series buyers care about excess weight lmao

They should have a fully electric Maverick.

that’s the demographic.

Remember when marketing departments existed and it just drones pushing noise into the social media streams?

There was a time when company's would sell people on ideas to create the demand.

Definitely part of it IMO

Okay, so let me preface this by saying that I'm not necessarily arguing but just doing the math for my own country just because it's fun. It's also not super precise.

If you drive a lot, you'd be buying diesel not petrol. Usually. But that's just me nitpicking, I assume you mean ICEs in general.

It depends on your region too. In some, EVs are so much cheaper to run it's not funny, in some they're comparable.

In my country, if you choose the correct power company for home electricity, a public charger during daytime is 0.333€/kWh. If you use a cheaper power company at home, you pay 0.37€/kWh at the biggest chain of public chargers. This of course assumes you use the cheaper, <=100 kW chargers. Faster ones are more expensive so we'll just pretend they don't exist. Charging at home varies from 0.05 to 5€/kWh if you have a variable rate package or if you lock yourself in to a price it's probably around 0.15 if you locked in a few years ago for a long period, or 0.2 if you lock in now. This is including the transmission fees and everything.

So let's say bare minimum 0.15 unless you want to time it by hour, and maximum 0.33 because most people aren't stupid and unplug their shit when the prices skyrocket for an hour or 2, so realistically home charging SHOULD always be cheaper than public charging.

An MB EQE sedan will do roughly 20 kWh/100km driving on a highway at 120km/h with AC and stuff on - normal driving, not super eco, but also not very wasteful. That can be anywhere between 3 euros per 100 km (VERY cheap compared to ICE) and 6.6 EUR per 100 km. Comparable E-Class diesel sedan or wagon will do 4.5-5 l/100km these days at same speeds, so 6€ per 100 km at the fuel price I got last time, 4€ at the best price I can get, or 7 for the worst prices seen this year.

Let's assume you have a great electricity price locked in and you only ever charge at home, and that fuel prices go back up and stay there. This is a 4€ difference in the price for 100 km, in the EV's favor. A huge difference tbh. But the price difference for cheapest EQE and cheapest diesel E-Class is 10k in favor of the diesel. At this price difference, it takes 250k km for the power savings to pay off. A lot of these cars get sold off before the first owner even reaches that mileage.

This math changes significantly with used cars, though. Cheapest BMW i4 I could find is 43k for a 2023. Cheapest diesel 4 series is 40k (and has more kilometers actually). At 3k price difference it takes only 75k km to pay off the difference assuming similar efficiency ratings for both, I cba to look it up. I wanted to do i5 and 5 series, but the i5s are so new they haven't really depreciated yet.

And if you use public chargers exclusively, well, it'll essentially never pay off at current prices. But that could change in the future.

Another thing to consider, though, is that here you're not really getting a "driver's car" with the ICE. Diesels are work horses and inline 4s particularly aren't anything special. The EVs, both the Mercedes and BMW, have significantly more power. You kinda get more for your money there, I was just doing a purely financial comparison, while keeping to German cars because that's pretty much all I drive usually (may be changing this though, I'm eyeing a hybrid Lexus as my stepping stone car between my diesel A6 and whatever EV I'll buy when my finances have recovered from a shitty marriage)