Mostly, no. Maybe some of those coastal elites who will buy them for status
Automakers Are Going All In on Electric Pickups. Will Anyone Buy Them?
Mitchell Yow’s pickup truck has decals advertising that the vehicle is all-electric, but sometimes people aren’t convinced. “That’s not really electric, is it?†bystanders will ask, often approaching him in grocery store parking lots in Surprise, Arizona, where Yow and his company Torque Trends, which makes gearboxes for converting gasoline vehicles to electric, swapped out the hulking Ford F-150’s V8 engine for an electric motor. The result doesn’t look like any zero-emissions vehicle most people have seen. “Even though they see it, and they read it, they don’t believe it,†says Yow. “They’ve never heard of an electric truck.â€
That’s likely about to change. As automakers’ investments in electric vehicles (EVs) ramp up, pickup trucks are fast becoming a new front in the electrification wars. Manufacturers from Tesla to Ford are unveiling electric pickups—just last week, General Motors said it will deliver a 400-mile-range electric Chevrolet Silverado—though they have yet to hit the market. For automakers, the potential rewards are huge, as pickups accounted for one in five new cars sold in the U.S. in 2020. Environmental gains could be big, too. When it comes to typical highway or city driving, pickups are disproportionately wasteful; even the newest models have dismal fuel economy ratings. Getting pickup drivers to switch to more efficient options is essential if the U.S. is to decarbonize its economy, and electric pickups could also help automakers reach fleetwide fuel efficiency targets.
But for now, the possibility of mass conversion to electric pickups seems tenuous at best. Most EV buyers so far have been wealthy coastal dwellers, while pickup buyers tend to live in different areas of the country, often with different values and needs. “We’ve been thinking about it for a long time,†says Autotrader analyst Michelle Krebs. “We’re always saying internally, ‘Do you think anybody really wants an EV pickup truck?’â€
That’s a good question: do they really want one? Do you think people who are using their pickups for actual work, ones which have decades and decades of reliability, dependability, and durability built into them, want to switch? How much more will these cost? Prices for the Silverado, meant for release in 2023, haven’t been released, but the estimates say they will be way above a regular Silverado.
For one thing, there might not be a huge overlap between people currently interested in EVs and those who buy pickups. Historically, EV adoption has been the highest in liberal-leaning coastal states, especially California and Washington. States where pickups rule the roads, like Texas, Wyoming, and North Dakota, tend toward big skies and conservative values. On an individual basis, survey data have shown EV and hybrid buyers tend to lean Democratic, while pickup drivers lean Republican. One Oct. 2020 Strategic Vision survey showed that more than 50% of heavy-duty pickup buyers identify as Republicans, while less than 10% say they are Democrats. Meanwhile, Democrats bought 36% of midsize hybrids and EVs, compared to less than 20% bought by Republicans. Electric pickups’ potential is further limited by the fact that many states with high numbers of pickup drivers tend to have the worst EV charging infrastructure.
Even then, you aren’t finding that many Democrats switching to EVs, because they cannot afford them.
There’s also a deeper issue with some of the upcoming vehicles themselves. Auto industry analysts say that many of the new electric pickup trucks set to hit the market, like the Tesla Cybertruck, the Rivian R1T, and GM Hummer EV, appear to be aimed more at wealthy “lifestyle†buyers (coders who go rock climbing on the weekends, for instance) than “traditional†pickup truck buyers (who are more likely to use them for, say, pulling equipment around a farm or hauling building materials). That might mean that, in the near term, electric pickups might cut into sales of luxury EVs like the Tesla Model S rather than reduce demand for internal-combustion pickups.
The only way the switch happens is if Government forces people to do this. Few auto buyers are asking for this.
It is cute how the accompanying photo for the story used the reflection of an American Flag, though, eh?
Read: Say, Will People Actually Purchase EV Pickup Trucks To Stop Climate Apocalypse? »