“I don’t know anybody who buys a car based on climate change,” Jeff Allen, executive director of Forth Mobility, an Oregon-based electric transportation advocacy and policy group, said. “There’s a list of things you want in a new car, and I think climate change for most people comes somewhere below cupholders.”
This, he said during a webinar Dec. 16 hosted by Forth, is not the No. 1 issue. “And instead of focusing on the fact that it’s a better technology, it’s more affordable, it’s more convenient technology, we focused on, ‘you should buy this because polar bears will hug you.’”
These revelations come as the EV industry in the United States seems to be in retreat, with carmakers pulling back on production and the release of new models. Ford announced in December it was halting production of its much-hyped all-electric F-150 Lightning pickup truck. CES, the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week, will include no announcements from manufacturers touting new EV models, according to a report by Reuters.
This movement is largely in response to shifts in federal priorities including the end of federal tax credits for EVs, and the rolling back of fuel economy standards.
It marks a clear departure from previous years when policy at local, state and even federal levels trended toward crafting regulations to advance the sale and use of EVs, Allen said. He characterized the last several years of EV advocacy as “we pushed really hard on those beautiful regulations, and the policy drivers, and maybe should have focused a little more time and attention on the affordability and the implementation, and the execution, to make it easier to hit those targets.”
The long-term affordability of EVs, given their indifference to stops for gas and reduced maintenance schedules, should have played higher in the messaging, experts said, with policy direction focused on expanding the required infrastructure to ensure the vehicles were convenient to use.
“We do need to make sure that the prices are at a point where people can afford them [EVs],” Justine Johnson, chief mobility officer with the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, said during the panel. “But we also need to make sure that the infrastructure is reliable, and that its working, and that it’s accessible for all.”
Johnson was careful to point out “a number of emerging companies” coming forward. She called attention to Slate Auto, which plans to produce affordable, bare-bones EVs, priced at about $27,000, as “very bare, but kind of getting back to the point of affordability.”
“I think you’re starting to see how even the larger automakers are thinking about what this means in terms of competition, and what this means in terms of getting themselves ready for this shift,” she said.
Research does seem to point toward a U.S. EV market in a stalled, or even regressed pattern. Data from Cox Automotive showed November 2025 new EV sales down 41.2 percent from November 2024. However, year-to-date EV sales ended November 2.1 percent up from the same period in 2024.
Even if U.S. consumers and automakers seem to be hitting the pause button on EVs, the rest of the world is not, Monica Araya, a distinguished fellow for the ClimateWorks Foundation, an international philanthropic organization, said.
“It’s very important for all of you who are based in the U.S. to keep a place in your brain where you keep alive the fact that electrification is only going to increase around the world in the next year, and in the next five years,” Araya said during the panel, characterizing the reasons as being largely economic and related to the high price of oil. “When I say that electrification is happening a lot in other places … it’s because of economic reasons. It’s not because they are thinking of the environment.”
