Three Roadblocks To EV Adoption: Google Points Out What Needs To Be Solved

Two of them we already saw coming. The remaining one was completely unexpected.

“Ask Google” is something people now say whenever they want to know more about anything. The tech company knows that and has created a team of Human Truths back in 2015. What they do is understanding people’s diffuse concerns and translating them into more approachable ideas. The Google Human Truths Team made that with EV adoption and discovered three main roadblocks in its way. While two of them were not new to us, the one that is is a complete surprise.

The first obstacle towards EV ownership is cost. As the main image shows, searches related to electric car costs are more than 20 times those of combustion-engined vehicle searches in the US and the UK. In Germany, that proportion is cut in half, but it is still meaningful: ten times more than comparable searches related to ICE cars.

By cost, Google means everything involved with it. Higher prices than those charged for combustion-engined cars are just the tip of the iceberg. Depreciation, battery replacement prices, and charging costs are part of the package, and we have mentioned these aspects more than once.

Jason Klein and Joonsu Yang, the authors of the study, suggest that automakers willing to boost EV adoption must make an effort to show how electric cars can present advantages. An online cost comparison tool is the example they give of a useful way to convince customers to switch to EVs. The problem with that is that, apart from a few manufacturers dedicated to electric cars, all other companies still have ICE-powered products to sell.