The Wrong Americans Are Buying Electric Cars

tech.hindustantimes.com:

Keller Strother got his first Tesla, a Roadster, in 2011. He still has it, though his garage now includes two more Teslas and a vintage Porsche 911 that recently had its gas-burning guts swapped out for a battery and electric motors. 

In a warming world, where roughly one quarter of Americans are keen to buy an electric vehicle, Strother has four of them. 

“The technology is so viable and it's such a better solution,” he says. “And I've always been a little obsessed with having the right tool for a job.”

EV adoption is finally ramping up in the US. But what the fever line doesn't show is that it's lumpy. A large share of battery-powered cars are being bought by households that already own an EV, or two or three for that matter. The EV early adopter has given way to the superuser or, some might say, the hoarder. And despite their good intentions, these double-dippers may unwittingly be shrinking the climate benefits their cars can offer.

“A, the wrong people are buying these cars,” says Ashley Nunes, a Harvard economist studying this dynamic. “And B, the way those people are using these cars makes it very difficult for them to deliver an emissions advantage.”

In a recent Bloomberg survey of EV drivers, 14% of respondents said they owned more than one battery-powered vehicle, and 6% of those surveyed had three or more. That doubling-down dynamic is clear in sales data, too. Some 26% of EV buyers in the second quarter either traded their used electric car for a new one or simply added another to their garage, according to Edmunds. Another 9% of recent EV buyers were already driving a hybrid. Scientists, politicians and auto executives have championed electric cars to replace gas-burning vehicles, but much of the time that's not