“How many miles must an EV drive?” might have made it into Bob Dylan’s list of unanswerable questions if he’d been at the peak of his song-writing output during today’s mass transition to electric vehicles. 

Despite most Americans driving just 30-40 miles a day, a Reuters/Ipsos survey released this week showed that a third of U.S. consumers who would consider buying an all-electric vehicle as their next vehicle say they need at least 500 miles of charge – with another third saying they need at least 300 miles. 

The desire for your car to have a range far beyond what you use in daily life – dubbed “range anxiety” in the industry – is the paradox of the electric age.  

In part, you could argue range anxiety is a result of charging anxiety – people don’t trust that they’ll find a charging point when they need it and would rather be safe.

That isn’t entirely misplaced: the U.S. has about 130,000 charging stations now, and studies say it’ll need millions by 2030 if EV uptake grows as expected. 

What’s more, EV charger makers are now scrambling to comply with new rules that their chargers must be ‘Made in America’ without slowing down expansion even further. 

The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind … but we’ll do our best to share what we know in today’s Auto File, brought to you by Nick Carey in London and Victoria Waldersee in Berlin: 

• A third of Americans want EVs, at the right price 
• A late play for e-fuels in the EU 
• EV charger makers scramble to make it in the USA 

Workers tend to an unfinished Lordstown Motors Endurance electric pick-up truck on the assembly line at Foxconn’s electric vehicle production facility in Lordstown, Ohio, U.S. REUTERS/Quinn Glabicki

So, let’s dig a little deeper into this poll. Reuters/Ipsos asked 4,410 people nationwide (with a credibility interval of about 2 to 3  percentage points in either direction) whether they’d consider buying an all-electric vehicle as their next vehicle. 

A little over a third of Americans said yes – but with some caveats.  

The first is price, with 56% of respondents saying they would pay no more than $49,999. Unfortunately, many EVs in the U.S. market easily breach that threshold.  

If, like younger respondents to the survey, you’re happy with a smaller model, a Chevy Bolt at $26,500 (plus a $7,500 tax credit), or a Nissan Leaf at under $30,000 would make the cut. But if you’re over 40, the survey showed you’re more likely to want an SUV, which is unlikely to cost less than $50,000 anytime soon given the size of the battery it’ll need to lug around.  

The second, as mentioned above, is range. 

And of course, no American story today isn’t a political story – the poll also showed a partisan divide, with 50% of Democrats saying they would consider an EV versus 26% of Republicans. 

In the latest episode of the e-fuels saga in Europe, a new proposal has emerged, according to a draft document seen by Reuters: developing software that would recognise what kind of fuel a combustion engine car is running on and only allowing it to drive if it’s an e-fuel, rather than gasoline or diesel. 

The proposal offers a route for carmakers to keep selling combustion engine vehicles after 2035, when a planned EU law is set to ban the sale of new CO2-emitting cars. 

Germany and a few other countries are fighting for new combustion engine cars to still be produced from then on if driven on e-fuels (see here for our explainer on what those are). Sources told Reuters that even this proposal didn’t have their full support because it would still require automakers to develop new engines. 

Meanwhile, the ongoing legal fallout from the Dieselgate scandal – like this week’s EU ruling that Mercedes owes drivers compensation for illegal defeat devices installed in their vehicles – are a somber reminder that installing software devices to regulate a car’s carbon footprint does not always end well. 

The parties involved hope for a deal by Thursday’s EU summit. 

Also, the EU’s proposed Euro 7 vehicle emission rules came under fire from an industry lobby group, which said the regulations would raise new car prices without bringing any of their intended environmental benefits. 

Do you have one in electric?

Manufacturers and operators of EV chargers in the United States are scrambling to comply with rules that they assemble their chargers at U.S. factories and use U.S.-made iron or steel enclosures if they want some of the $7.5 billion government subsidies on offer. 

The “Made in America” terms of the federal program have caught many in the EV charging industry off guard who had hoped for some temporary waivers to ramp up U.S. production while still meeting demand. 

Companies and some state officials who will manage the federal funds warn U.S. domestic production capacity is lacking – particularly for high-speed chargers – and that strict enforcement will slow the rollout, drive up costs and possibly harm the industry. 

But the U.S. government argues that as demand is low in the short term, there should be enough chargers to go around. 

EVs made up just 0.5% of Mexico’s car sales in 2022, new data showed, but the country has lofty goals to boost ownership. Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard, a leading contender to be Mexico’s next president, said the government wants EVs to account for half of all cars sold domestically by 2030. 

The problem(s): EVs are too expensive for most Mexicans, there’s a lack of subsidies for buyers, it costs too much to install chargers at home and there are not enough public charging stations. And Mexico has yet to even agree on a plan to phase out fossil-fuel vehicles.  

Argentina’s mining exports hit $3.86 billion in 2022, the highest level in a decade, boosted by lithium income to meet booming EV demand. Lithium exports surged 234% from a year earlier, accounting for nearly a fifth of all Argentine mining shipments. The country’s economy ministry expects mining revenues of $6 billion this year, boosted partly by two new lithium projects and a pair of major expansions underway. 

The World Bank’s private investment arm, International Finance Corp, will invest about $73 million in Indian automaker Mahindra and Mahindra Ltd’s new last-mile electric mobility unit to scale up and develop new products, including three-wheeler and four-wheeler small commercial vehicles. 

Maserati says it wants to be more profitable before considering a spinoff from 52-billion-euro parent Stellantis – a sensible view, according to Reuters Breaking Views. The Italian sports car brand returned to the black in 2021 after a period of losses. But at 8.7% of revenue, Maserati’s 2022 operating margin was less than half the 18% of larger German rival Porsche and about a third of luxury peer Ferrari’s 24%.   

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