Heartland Consumers, Predictably, Have Been Last To Embrace EVs

It’s axiomatic that America’s heartland is a cultural runner-up to the early adopters on the coasts, and that extends significantly to the choices that Flyover Country denizens make in their automobiles.

Emblematic of that is the fact that, when Ford introduced the design of its sleek new, ninth-generation Thunderbird in the early 1980s, the first consumers to give a nod to the new design were on the coasts, and the bands of acceptance kept growing over time until, at the end, there was essentially a 100-mile strip on either side of the Mississippi River that still didn’t like the new design.

Something like that is going on with heartland acceptance of electric vehicles, although there are for more substantive and rational factors at play, too, besides simple dislike for the latest fashion in autos.

Retail registrations of EVs have yet to take hold outside of large coastal cities, according to a new analysis form S&P Global Mobility. The top eight EV markets in the U.S. are all in coastal states, and represent 50.5% of total EV registrations in 2022. The greater Los Angeles and San Francisco areas alone account for nearly one-third of the total share of the U.S. EV market.

Meanwhile, the 22 heartland states — defined by S&P pretty much as all the states that don’t touch a seacoast — represented only 15.5% of EVs through August, compared with those states’ overall 27.1% share of the U.S. vehicle market. “Their representation in EV adoption has remained stagnant from 2021 into this year,” S&P Global Mobility said. Only Colorado and Nebraska (and to a minuscule extent, Utah) out-punched their overall retail share in EV representation.

“BEV market share control on the two coasts is attributed to their higher mix of early adopters compared to buyers in middle America,” said Tom Libby, associate director of loyalty solutions and industry analysis at S&P Global Mobility. “Their demographic profile is more in sync with the traditional BEV buyer than the middle-American profile.”

But Libby also acknowledged that other factors might be at play in a “chicken-and-egg scenario”: a lack of EV-charging infrastructure and lack of state and local incentives for consumers to install charging equipment in their garages in the heartland, compared with the progressive playgrounds of the coasts. Despite some initiatives such as a consortium of five Upper Midwest states that have pledged to build a collective EV-charging network, many Flyover Country denizens notice that there still simply aren’t many charging stations dotting the vast stretches of interstate highways that so many of them depend on to get where they’re going.

And there’s another factor: Despite some high-profile recent introductions of battery-powered large vehicles, such as Ford’s F-150 Lightning pickup truck, there still are relatively few all-electric models in mid-size and large SUVs and trucks that have larger shares of the market in many heartland states than on the coasts. There are hybrid-electric versions of more such models.

“There was no real option in terms of family-friendly, moderately priced [crossover utility vehicles],” said James Martin, associate director of consulting for S&P Global Mobility. “And some models, such as the Hyundai Kona EV, were initially not available in midwestern states” because automakers focused early distribution on coastal states where they could accumulate carbon credits.

“The adoption of BEVs is a long-term process that needs to reach an inflection point similar to the adoption, or acceptance, of Asian-sourced vehicles in the U.S.,” Libby said. “That inflection point is when the product becomes generally accepted and it usually occurs when volume and exposure reach a level that influences all the reluctant outsiders.”