Electric vehicles close to ‘tipping point’ of mass adoption

New cars (electric or not) are pretty expensive. The average price of a new car in the US just topped $40k, which is out of reach of many car buyers. The people who buy new obviously tend to be well-off, and are often older. Then at some point down the road, those cars end up in the hands of (on average) younger, less-wealthy folks.

But younger folks might not want the same thing as older folks. One niche example is the manual transmission. Looking at a car like the Mazda Miata - something like a third of those are sold new with an automatic transmission. The buyers (again, maybe older) don't want to bother shifting their own gears, so they pay an extra $1k or so for an automatic. But when those cars are affordable used cars, and the market is younger car enthusiasts, Miatas with an automatic transmission are worth quite a bit less. The preferences of the new $30k convertible buyers aren't the same as the preferences of the used $5k convertible buyers, even though those $30k cars eventually become the $5k cars.

With electric cars I wonder if we'll see a similar divide. I know a few people (software engineers who own their own single family homes) who have bought new electric cars. Folks I know from less wealthy walks of life (daycare providers, teachers, grad students, etc) have not bought used electric cars. Surely that's at least partially because used electric cars don't exist in great numbers, but I also wonder if those folks (people who rent, or move often, etc) might be less enamored with a car where they don't know they'll be able to charge it at home, or a depleted battery pack means less range or costly repair, etc.

I'm hoping for an electric future and I want my next car to be electric ... I'm just really curious to see if/when middle- and lower-class Americans start adopting these in large numbers.

In Washington, US, they increased the registration fee for electrics to make up for the shortfall in gas taxes that pay for road wear, congestion, etc. So that's already happening.

The lower ongoing costs of electric can justify a higher upfront price, but then you are paying more up front.

This has actually stopped me from buying a used EV in the last year, twice. Dealers aren't up front about used cars history in general, and, again from just the two I looked at, they are 1000% hiding any information they can regarding the battery packs.

This is the largest hurdle to the used car market (after the shortage of used EV's because of their novelty). People hesitate to buy used combustion cars, because of unknown mechanical issues that may pop up; but this can be alleviated by using a trusted mechanic to once-over the car. They ABSOLUTELY hesitate to buy used EV's because of the battery packs, and who can you go to in order to evaluate that? Nobody.

>I'm just really curious to see if/when middle- and lower-class Americans start adopting these in large numbers.

When they have no choice. I'm in this boat - I work in education and my spouse works in education. We are solidly middle- to lower-middle class. We can't afford most new cars. Used cars are pricey anymore as well. The only way we will upgrade to an EV is if we can find a trustworthy used model, or when we have no choice, because gas is $10/gallon.