EV sales in the US were 50% higher in 2023 than in 2022. So not only is there plenty of demand, but demand is rapidly growing.
However, car manufacturers anticipated even faster growth, hence they made more EVs than they could sell, hence all the complaints about unsold inventory and “lack of demand for EVs”.
Dealerships are the bottleneck here. They’ve lobbied the states to make it illegal/very difficult for manufacturers to sell straight to consumer and have jacked up EV prices as a result. MSRP on most electrics are a joke right now.
Funny enough, perhaps the most innovative thing Tesla ever did was breaking this mold and look how successful they’ve become because of it.* Ford’s been trying for years now to get their dealers under control to middling results, just to show how pervasive it is.
- please don’t read into this as any kind of pro-Elon praise. There’s plenty to criticize Tesla/Elon Musk for, but the only point I’m making here is that selling directly to consumers isn’t one of them.
