The EV Culture Wars Aren’t What They Seem

For years, Donald Trump has taken seemingly every opportunity to attack electric vehicles. They will cause a “bloodbath” for the auto industry, he told Ohio crowds in March. “The damn things don’t go far enough, and they’re too expensive,” he declared last September. EVs are a “ridiculous Green New Deal crusade,” he said a few months earlier. “Where do I get a charge, darling?” he mocked in 2019.

But of late, the former president hasn’t quite sounded like his usual self. At the Republican National Convention in July, Trump said he is “all for electric [vehicles]. They have their application.” At a rally on Long Island last month, he brought up EVs during a winding rant. “I think they’re incredible,” he said of the cars, twice. To hear Trump tell it, the flip came at the bidding of Tesla CEO Elon Musk: “I’m for electric cars—I have to be,” he said in August, “because Elon endorsed me very strongly.” Not that Trump is unambiguously praising plug-in vehicles: He still opposes incentives to boost EV sales, which he repeated at his Long Island rally. The crowd erupted in cheers.

In America, driving green remains a blue phenomenon. Many Republicans in Congress have rejected EVs, with one senator calling them “left-wing lunacy” and part of Democrats’ “blind faith in the climate religion.” The GOP rank and file is also anti-EV. In 2022, roughly half of new EVs in America were registered in the deepest-blue counties, according to a recent analysis from UC Berkeley. That likely hasn’t changed since: A Pew survey conducted this May found that 45 percent of Democrats are at least somewhat likely to buy an EV the next time they purchase a vehicle, compared with 13 percent of Republicans.

If anyone can persuade Republican EV skeptics, it should be Trump—when he talks, his party listens. During the pandemic, his support for unproven COVID therapies was linked to increased interest in and purchases of those medications; his followers have rushed to buy his Trump-branded NFTs, watches, sneakers. But when it comes to EVs, Trump’s apparent change of heart might not be enough to spur many Republicans to go electric: His followers’ beliefs may be too complex and deep-rooted for Trump himself to overturn.

EVs were destined for the culture wars. “When we buy a car, the model and the brand that we choose also represents a statement to our neighbors, to the public, of who we are,” Loren McDonald, an EV consultant, told me. Like the Toyota Prius in years prior, zero-emission electric cars are an easy target for Republicans who have long railed against climate change, suggesting that it’s not real, or not human-caused, or not a serious threat. EVs have been “construed as an environmental and liberal object,” Nicole Sintov, an environmental psychologist at Ohio State University who studies EV adoption, told me. Her research suggests that the cars’ perceived links to environmental benefits, social responsibility, and technological innovation might attract Democrats to them. Meanwhile, most people “don’t want to be seen doing things that their out-group does,” Sintov said, which could turn Republicans away from EVs.

Republicans’ hesitance to drive an EV is remarkably strong and sustained. The Berkeley analysis, for instance, found that the partisan divide in new EV registrations showed up in not only 2022, but also 2021, and 2020, and every year since 2012, when the analysis began. It remains even after controlling for income and other pragmatic factors that might motivate or dissuade people from buying an EV, Lucas Davis, a Berkeley economist and one of the authors, told me.

All of this suggests that Trump’s flip-flop has at least the potential to “go a long way toward boosting favorability” of electric cars among Republicans, Joe Sacks, the executive director of the EV Politics Project, an advocacy group aiming to get Republicans to purchase EVs, told me. If you squint, there are already signs of changing opinions, perhaps brought on more so by Musk than the former president. After Musk’s own public swing to the far right, a majority of Republicans say he is a good ambassador for EVs, according to the EV Politics Project’s polling. Tucker Carlson began a recent review of the Tesla Cybertruck by saying that “the global-warming cult is going to force us all to drive electric vehicles,” but admitted, at the end, that it was fun to get behind the wheel. Adin Ross, an internet personality popular with young right-leaning men, recently gave Trump a Cybertruck with a custom vinyl wrap of the former president raising his fist moments after the assassination attempt in Pennsylvania. “I think it’s incredible,” Trump reacted.

But ideology might not account entirely for Republican opposition to EVs. The other explanation for the partisan gap is that material concerns with EVs—such as their cost, range, or limited charging infrastructure—happen to be a bigger issue for Republican voters than for Democrats. The bluest areas, for instance, tend to have high incomes, gasoline taxes, and population density, all of which might encourage EV purchases. EVs typically have higher sticker prices than their gas-powered counterparts, and in urban areas, people generally have to drive less, ameliorating some of the “range anxiety” that has dogged electric cars. Consider California, which accounts for more than a third of EVs in the U.S. Climate-conscious liberals in San Francisco may be seeking out EVs, but that’s not the whole story. The state government has heavily promoted driving electric, public chargers are abundant, and California has the highest gas prices in the country.

The opposite is true in many red states. For instance, many Republicans live in the South and Upper Midwest, especially in more rural areas. That might appear to account for the low EV sales in these areas, but residents also might have longer commutes, pay less for gas, and live in a public-charging desert, McDonald told me. California has more than 47,000 public charging stations, or 1.2 stations per 1,000 people; South Dakota has 265 public chargers, or less than 0.3 per 1,000 residents. “If you part all of the politics, at the end of the day I think the nonpolitical things are going to outweigh people’s decisions,” he said. “Can I afford it? Does it fit my lifestyle? Do I have access to charging?” In relatively conservative Orange County, California, 27 percent of new passenger vehicles sold this year were fully electric—higher than statewide, and higher than the adjacent, far bluer Los Angeles County.

Indeed, after the Berkeley researchers adjusted for pragmatic considerations, for instance, the statistical correlation between political ideology and new EV registrations remained strong, but decreased by 30 percent. Various other research concurs that political discord isn’t the only thing behind EVs’ partisan divide: In her own analyses, Sintov wrote to me over email, the effect of political affiliation on EV attitudes was on par with that of “perceived maintenance and fuel costs, charging convenience, and income.” McDonald’s own research has found that fuel costs and income are stronger predictors than political views. In other words, partisanship could be the “icing on the cake” for someone’s decision, McDonald said, rather than the single reason Democrats are going electric and Republicans are not.

From the climate’s perspective, Trump’s EV waffling is certainly better than the alternative. But his new tack on EVs is unclear, and it doesn’t speak to conservatives’ specific concerns, whether pragmatic or ideological. As a result, Trump is unlikely to change many minds, Jon Krosnick, a social psychologist at Stanford who researches public opinions on climate change, told me. Teslas are a “great product,” Trump has said, but not a good fit for many, perhaps even most, Americans. He’s “all for” EVs, except that they’re ruining America’s economy. “Voters who are casually observing this are pretty confused about where he is, because it is inconsistent,” Sacks said. But they know where the rest of the party firmly stands: Gas cars are better.

Perhaps most consequential about Trump’s EV comments is what the former president hasn’t changed his mind on. By continuing to say that he wants to repeal the Biden administration’s EV incentives, Trump could further entrench EV skeptics of all political persuasions. The best way to persuade Republicans to buy a Tesla or a Ford F-150 Lightning might simply be to make doing so easier and cheaper: offering tax credits, building public charging stations, training mechanics to fix these new cars. Should he win, Trump just might do the opposite.