Today’s Pickup: PEV, Tesla owners in California mostly rich men

Good day,

That Tesla buyers are mostly men and mostly rich doesn’t come as much of  a surprise. The car is pricey – ranging in cost from $35,000 to $124,000 before tax incentives – and the marketing skews masculine. That a majority of buyers of all plug-in electric vehicles (PEV) in California are male comes as more of a surprise. But that’s one of the findings of a new study based on survey responses co-authored by Scott Hardman, a post-doctoral researcher at the UC Davis Institute for Transportation Studies. Hardman, who reported on the study during this week’s Roadmap 12 EV conference, said 49 percent of PEV buyers in the state were so-called “high-income” (those who earned more than $252,000 annually and owned their home), and only 24 percent of those high income buyers were women. The second-largest group of buyers – at 26 percent – earned an average of $127,000 annually, and only 26 percent in that category were women. An even smaller  proportion of women, 22 percent, were Tesla owners.

Interestingly, gender equity increased lower down on the income ladder – 48 percent of PEV owners who fell into a category defined as “middle income renters” were female. “I don’t know why so few women purchase EVs,” Hardman puzzled with FreightWaves after his talk. “It’s something we need to look into.”

One thing is certain: Since only 3.6 percent of California’s population falls into the high-income category, that group will not continue to be the largest group of PEV adopters. “The high income cluster will be saturated,” Hardman said.