Americans Want Electric Cars, But They Just Can’t Find Them

John Paul Helveston

 October 21, 2026

FacebookTwitterRedditBlueskyEmail

Photo by Ashes Sitoula

Within three months of the U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran on Feb. 28, 2026, the average price of gasoline for American drivers climbed from US$2.94 to $4.35 a gallon. If there was ever a moment for Americans to switch to electric vehicles, this was it.

From March to May 2026, in fact, sales of hybrid electric vehicles were 18% higher than over the same months in 2025.

But sales of fully electric vehicles were 16% lower from March to May 2026 compared with the same months in 2025. Some observers took that as evidence that high gas prices alone wouldn’t push Americans toward fully electric cars, but that conclusion misses half the story.

I study car buyers and their preferences, and there is an important distinction between what consumers want and what they can actually buy. Sales reveal what cars people actually bought, but not necessarily what they actually wanted.

When the supply of some kinds of cars can’t keep up with demand, prices rise, and that’s exactly what happened for electric vehicles in 2026.

An industry in retreat

In 2026, hybrids and all-electric vehicles faced the same jump in demand from the oil crisis. While there were plenty of hybrids available to meet that demand, the same was not true for EVs.

Hybrid production had been growing for years, led by Toyota, which sells about half of the hybrids bought in the United States. As a result, even as sales surged, hybrid inventories on dealer lots were 19% higher in March 2026 than they had been a year earlier.

However, EV production had been in retreat since the tax and spending law President Donald Trump signed in July 2025 ended federal tax credits for EVs. Buyers had been able to get up to $7,500 for new EVs and $4,000 for used ones, but that ended after Sept. 30, 2025.

Automakers responded by cutting back their EV production. General Motors laid off more than 3,400 workers at its EV and battery plants and shifted its Tennessee plant to make batteries for energy storage, not cars. Ford wrote off $19.5 billion from its EV business, ended production of the all-electric F-150 Lightning and converted a Tennessee EV plant to build gas-powered trucks.

Buyers, for their part, rushed to beat the tax credit deadline, pushing EVs to 11.3% of new vehicle sales in September 2025. But by November 2025, after the tax credits ended, their share dropped to 4.3%.

As 2026 progressed and gas prices began to rise, so did EV demand. New EV inventories declined, shrinking from about 130 days of supply in the first quarter of 2026 to 78 days by August – just two days above the supply level of gas-burning cars.

Discounts on new EV models shrank too. My analysis of online listings from marketcheck.com shows the median new EV was listed 9.8% below sticker price in February. By April, the median discount was 6.6%, and 4.7% in June. That’s a sign that dealers saw rising demand, not inventory to clear.

A run on used electric vehicles

Before the war, prices for used electric vehicles were still drifting down in the wake of the expired used EV federal tax credit. After the war began, they climbed 13% through late June 2026. For a typical used electric vehicle, that’s about $3,500 more.

Other data sources point in the same direction. Recurrent, a company that reports on batteries and used EVs, found that the price of a used 2023 Chevrolet Bolt rose almost 20% from January to June 2026.

And inventories of used electric vehicles dropped too, with only 31 days of supply in May, 23% below the year before.

A costly misreading

None of this means the electric vehicle market is healthy. High prices and uncertain access to charging stations are real stumbling blocks for people who are thinking about buying an EV.

But the data doesn’t support the claim that electric vehicle sales stalled in 2026 because Americans don’t want them. Rather, the sales stalled because there weren’t enough EVs available to buy – and there were plenty of hybrids as an alternative.

The distinction matters because automakers have treated a change in the policy landscape as a change in consumer demand, leading to shortages with real costs.

The average new car now sells for about $50,000 and the average new electric vehicle for about $55,000, according to Kelley Blue Book, a company that tracks car prices.

The current situation leaves drivers exposed to the volatility of oil prices with fewer alternatives. The U.S. is the world’s largest oil producer, yet a war in the Persian Gulf raised gas prices significantly in just three months. Oil trades on a global market, so American drivers pay global prices.

Seven months into the war, the pressure on drivers is still going full throttle. Oil was still above $100 a barrel in mid-October, and diesel hit a record $6.52 a gallon on Sept. 22.

Electric vehicle sales haven’t caught up. Argonne’s data show 86,000 of them sold in August, fewer than the 101,000 sold in May, while hybrid sales stayed above 216,000 a month all summer.

A look ahead

Rather than move to increase electric vehicle supply and make them more affordable, federal policy continues to hinder the U.S. electric vehicle sector.

The fuel economy rule released Sept. 28, 2026, loosens efficiency requirements for gas-powered vehicles and in 2028 ends a system that let automakers that beat the standards – mostly EV makers – earn credits for exceeding them and sell those to automakers that fell short. That means automakers will have fewer regulatory incentives to produce EVs going forward.

Regulators say buyers will save $1,289 on the purchase price of a new gas-powered vehicle from reduced engineering and manufacturing costs to make less efficient engines. But the same analysis estimates drivers will spend about $1,600 more on gas over the life of the car, and that’s using fuel price forecasts well below today’s prices. Economists say the administration’s math does not properly account for those fuel costs.

The U.S. has also effectively shut out Chinese automakers, even though nearly three-quarters of the world’s electric cars are built in China. In 2024, Chinese car buyers could choose from over 130 EV models priced under $40,000; American buyers had just four EV models under that threshold. Beyond tariffs of more than 100% on EVs made in China, a Commerce Department rule bars cars from Chinese-linked automakers starting with model year 2027, even if they are built in the U.S. A bill pending in Congress would widen the ban, blocking Chinese investment in U.S. auto factories altogether.

As long as gas stays expensive, the gap between the electric vehicles Americans want and the electric vehicles dealers can sell them is likely to remain. Decisions such as ending the tax credit, rolling back fuel economy standards and banning Chinese technology all make it harder to build them, which means Americans will continue to have fewer affordable electric vehicles to choose from.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

John Paul Helveston is an Associate Professor of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering at George Washington University.

Inequality in the US is Getting Worse in Ways You Might Not Expect

Mark Schneider

 October 21, 2026

FacebookTwitterRedditBlueskyEmail

The buzzword of the 2026 U.S. midterm elections may be affordability, but growing anger over inequality is behind the sentiment.

A Pew Research survey released in October 2026 found that roughly 6 in 10 Americans – including 4 in 10 Republicans – believe there’s too much inequality in the U.S. And a growing share from both major political parties state that the economy needs to be fundamentally rebuilt to address this.

This sentiment has, however, been difficult to convert into political results. Public support for California’s proposed wealth tax on billionaires has been waning ahead of the midterms, for example, and in 2025, Republicans passed President Donald Trump’s sweeping legislation that included tax cuts for the wealthy while cutting safety net programs.

I’m an economist who has been studying inequality for about two decades. My research confirms the trend of rising inequality since 1980, driven by the wealthiest pulling away not just from the middle class, but also from the “merely wealthy.” Overall, recent research underscores how policy choices – including taxation and public spending – enabled this 40-year rise in inequality.

Some policies enacted more recently appear to be accelerating this trend. An analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a nonpartisan research organization, concluded that policy changes since the start of 2025 have imposed higher costs on everyone except the top 1%.

Inequality by the numbers

Recent federal data shows that wealth inequality continues to grow. The top 1% saw their share of wealth increase from 31.7% to 32.5% just between the first and second quarters of 2026, a jump of over $8.5 trillion. That caps a steady climb from 30.9% in the last quarter of 2024 – and from 27.4% in 1999.

These recent gains come at the expense of the middle class – the 40% between the bottom half and the top 10% – who hold only 28.8% of all wealth despite being a group that’s 40 times larger than the top 1%. And the middle’s share is shrinking, down from 32.9% in 1999 and 30.2% at the end of 2024, according to the data.

But the ultra-wealthy, those in the top 0.1%, are pulling away even from the rest of the rich, the data shows. This tiny elite owns 15% of all wealth – almost half of all the wealth of the top 1%. Both the top 0.1% and the next 0.9% saw their share of wealth increase, but the top 0.1% captured two-thirds of the gains between the first and second quarters of 2026.

Even within the highest echelons of wealth concentration, these two groups are on different trajectories.

Crucially, the wealth of the top 0.1% is disproportionately boosted by corporate profits, which are up sharply overall. The top 0.1% reap the most from this growth because their portfolios’ value has soared on the promise of future increased profitability that’s driving up stock prices – especially thanks to the tech and artificial intelligence boom.

How taxes play a role

Since President Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts in the 1980s, the U.S. tax code has become less and less progressive, often through policy changes supported by both Republicans and Democrats.

The common argument for tax cuts is that they stimulate growth, but a growing body of research – including international studies – doesn’t back that up. A 2025 Brookings report notes that U.S. tax policy has gone through massive changes throughout history without any discernible effect on growth.

Nonetheless, congressional Republicans used their narrow majorities in 2025 to pass Trump’s sweeping policy and tax bill, which included provisions making most of his 2017 tax cuts permanent. Those included the historically low top-income tax rate and the lowest corporate tax rate since 1940.

It’s also important to understand that the top 0.1% have a different tax exposure from the rest of the top 1% because the composition of their wealth is different. They own as much in stocks and mutual funds as the next 0.9%, a group that is nine times larger, and those holdings are where most of their recent gains came from.

Furthermore, roughly three-quarters of the top 0.1%’s wealth portfolio consists of corporate and business ownership, allowing them to benefit from the Trump tax cuts in multiple ways – including lower tax rates and more opportunities to defer or avoid tax liability. Their massive holdings of stock mean that they can borrow against it for cash, usually tax-free, rather than having to sell shares.

By contrast, below that elite, real estate is a much more important component of wealth, while corporate equity is a smaller and smaller share. For the middle class, nearly two-thirds of wealth is held in their homes and retirement savings, while corporate and business ownership accounts for only 15%.

The new drivers of inequality

Much of the inequality debate focuses on the role that taxation has played. But other recent policy changes have shifted different kinds of costs on to low- and middle-income earners, while leaving the wealthy relatively unscathed.

One example is a provision in Trump’s 2025 legislation that allowed federal healthcare subsidies through the Affordable Car Act to lapse. Insurers and analysts expect the number of people signing up for coverage through ACA plans to drop by about 5 million due to higher premiums and face much higher out-of-pocket costs.

The spike in energy costs, including gasoline, diesel and heating oil, is another case in point. They disproportionately affect low- and middle-income consumers but barely dent the budgets of the wealthy – while boosting the profits of companies engaged to the extraction, processing and transportation of oil. This divergence has been especially pronounced since the start of the conflict with Iran in February 2026, which has pushed up the global price of oil.

Then there are tariffs, which are fundamentally a consumption tax on imports. Economists at the New York Federal Reserve have found that these levies have inflicted a heavy hit on many common consumer goods. They estimated that prices for these items, which make up a much larger share of household budgets among the nonwealthy, would have fallen on average by 1% over the year without the tariffs. Instead, they have risen by 2.9%.

This acceleration in the redistribution of wealth from the middle class to the very top, in short, has an array of drivers. But they’re not inexorable forces of history. As economist Thomas Piketty put it in “A Brief History of Equality,” published in 2022: “Inequality is first of all a social, historical, and political construction.”

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Markus Schneider is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Denver.