The HERE-SBD EV Index 2026, released September 9 by HERE Technologies and SBD Automotive, found that 53 percent of U.S. drivers say they are more open to considering an EV than they were a year ago. Among current EV owners, that receptiveness to fuel costs is even more pronounced: nearly eight in ten said gas prices had shaped their interest in going electric, compared with 57 percent of drivers overall. The price of gas is fueling interest in electric vehicles.
A Fourth Year of Tracking a Shifting Market
Now in its fourth edition, the HERE-SBD Index pairs a proprietary ranking of EV infrastructure maturity with a consumer survey, this year drawing on more than 4,000 drivers across the United States, Europe, India, and Australia, fielded online in June and July. The infrastructure side of the study draws on HERE’s own charge-point data alongside government and industry sources gathered between June 2025 and June 2026, covering all 50 states and Washington, D.C., along with 30 European countries, 34 Indian states and territories, and eight Australian states and territories.
The timing underscores an odd contradiction in the American EV market right now. U.S. EV market share sits at 5.37 percent year-to-date, down nearly three percentage points from all of 2025, largely a consequence of the federal tax credit’s expiration last fall. Yet even as new EV registrations have slowed, the study’s authors found consumer sentiment moving in the opposite direction. Ten percent fewer non-EV drivers said they intend to buy a gas vehicle next time around, compared with last year’s survey, and 12 percent said they see no barriers at all to adopting an EV, double the 6 percent who said so a year earlier.
Charging Anxiety Is Easing Faster Than Expected
For years, the biggest obstacle standing between curious drivers and an EV purchase has been the fear of running out of charge somewhere with no place to plug in. That fear appears to be losing its grip. The share of U.S. drivers who believe the country has a reasonable number of public chargers jumped from 28 percent to 47 percent in a single year, and 60 percent now say they are confident the infrastructure will keep pace with demand.
The data backs up that optimism. The U.S. added 31,600 public charge points over the study period, a 13 percent increase, while total charging power climbed 47 percent, from 14.1 gigawatts to 20.7 gigawatts, a jump that translates into faster charging times at existing stations. Robert Fisher, Senior Consulting Manager at SBD Automotive, said the findings show consumers becoming more confident in the infrastructure supporting EV ownership even as overall adoption slows, and he described that shift in sentiment as a signal worth watching because consumer confidence tends to lead purchasing behavior rather than follow it.
Current owners are the most convinced of all. Eighty-five percent rate public charging coverage as good or better, a 13-point jump from last year, and most say the experience of owning an EV has exceeded what they expected going in: 76 percent said range performed better than anticipated, and nearly three-quarters said charging itself was easier than they’d feared. None of that addresses the harder problem of charging for the millions of Americans who live in apartments or rentals without dedicated parking, but for the majority of drivers who can plug in overnight at home, the once-dominant worry about finding a charger on the road appears to be fading.
Price, Not Range, Is Now the Sticking Point
If charging anxiety is retreating, affordability has taken its place as the dominant hesitation. Value for money topped the list of reasons drivers gave for considering an EV, cited by 31 percent of respondents, narrowly ahead of performance and lower running costs at 29 percent each. That undercurrent helps explain why automakers are racing to build cheaper electric trucks rather than more expensive ones.
Ford is betting big on that strategy with the Fathom, an electric pickup starting around $30,000 that the company hopes will sell more than 100,000 units in its first year on sale, according to The Wall Street Journal. That would be a striking reversal of fortune: Ford’s previous electric pickup, the F-150 Lightning, needed five full years to reach 105,000 total sales before the company discontinued it. Slate Auto is chasing a similar customer with its own stripped-down, low-cost electric truck. Whether either bet pays off will say a great deal about how much price sensitivity, rather than range or charging worries, is really holding back the broader market.
Once They Buy One, Owners Don’t Look Back
Perhaps the most durable finding in the HERE-SBD study, echoed across four years of the Index, is that EV ownership tends to be self-reinforcing. Seventy-seven percent of current EV owners said they would likely replace their vehicle with another EV rather than switch back to gasoline. Loyalty to domestic brands remains strong as well: 76 percent of American drivers said they would consider a U.S. automaker for their next vehicle, though more than a third said they would also consider a Chinese-made EV, a sign that brand openness is widening even as buyers stay cautious about unfamiliar names.
Geographically, the East Coast continues to dominate the Index’s state rankings, with Delaware, Washington, D.C., New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Connecticut occupying the top five spots, a lead the report attributes to a combination of charging investment, adoption rates, and supportive state policy. Connecticut, notably, is the only state in the study that offers an incentive specifically for used EV purchases.
A Market Being Pulled in Two Directions
That used-EV detail may matter more than it first appears. New EV sales have fallen sharply since the Trump administration rolled back federal incentives, gutted charging-infrastructure funding, and eased emissions rules, but the used market has moved the opposite direction. Cox Automotive reported a record 128,000 used EVs sold in the second quarter of 2026, up 29 percent from the same period a year earlier, as buyers priced out of new EVs, or simply tired of rising fuel costs, turned to the secondhand market instead.
That leaves the used-EV supply looking increasingly strained relative to demand. If diesel and gasoline prices stay elevated as the war with Iran continues, the relatively small pool of used electric vehicles may not be enough to satisfy drivers looking for an alternative, which could eventually push more of them toward new EVs despite the higher price tag and the loss of federal incentives. It would be an unlikely outcome for an administration that has made little secret of its skepticism toward electric vehicles: a war it started abroad may end up doing more to revive domestic EV demand than any tax credit did.