Editor’s note: This story was updated on Oct. 22 at 10:15 a.m.
Mike Fought is the rarest of car shoppers in Toledo.
The Perrysburg resident is looking to buy a plug-in electric vehicle, specifically a Nissan Leaf.
He’s still several weeks out from pulling the trigger. But when he does, he’ll be in very select company.
Just 47 full-electric vehicles have been sold this year through August in the entire Toledo metropolitan area. And only 60 were sold here in all of 2017.
Those minuscule numbers represent less than one-fifth of 1 percent of all vehicles sold locally, according to data from auto data and analysis company IHS Markit.
“People around here like their SUVs and pickup trucks and want to put gas in them,” said Greg Dunn, general manager of Dunn Chevrolet Buick.
The dealership in Oregon sells just six vehicles a year of Chevrolet’s electric offerings — the all-electric Chevy Bolt and the Chevy Volt — which is a plug-in with a gas engine to extend its mileage range before refueling.
Fought, 60, is a statistical outlier for even considering an electric vehicle in Toledo.
A market researcher at a large Detroit-area auto parts supplier, Mr. Fought commutes 67 miles each way from Perrysburg to Canton Township in western Wayne County.
He said he wants a plug-in Nissan Leaf to reduce the cost of his commute. His “work” vehicle is a 2005 Toyota Camry sedan that still gets 28 miles per gallon of gas in combined city and highway driving, he said.
But with 306,000 miles on the odometer, Mr. Fought said he feels he’ll have to make a change over the next six months or so. The Camry is one of three cars his family owns.
He admits to having many of the trepidations about purchasing an all-electric vehicle that have kept the vehicles from catching on beyond California and New York. About 80 percent of all electric vehicles sold in the United States are sold in California and 10 percent in New York, said Stephanie Brinley, principal automotive analyst for IHS Markit.
Just 1 percent of the nearly 17 million U.S. vehicles sold last year were electrics and 2.5 percent were both electric and gas, like the Chevrolet Volt, IHS Markit data show. A de minimis .12 percent — or about one-tenth of 1 percent — of all cars sold in Toledo last year were electric and it is .14 percent this year through August.
Mr. Fought said he has concerns about buying electric, even though the Leaf still has a $7,500 tax credit available on purchases to effectively lower the $36,000 retail price if he itemizes on his federal income taxes.
First, Mr. Fought’s 134-mile round-trip commute is at the upper end of the Leaf’s 150-mile driving range on a full battery.
His employer has a few charging stations available, he said, but they typically are all occupied over the course of the business day.
There also are few charging stations around the Toledo area, with three downtown on Superior Street near Adams Street being a notable exception.
Mr. Fought said he’ll have to keep an eye on battery life while he’s driving, a condition known in industry vernacular as “range anxiety.”
Home charging stations aren’t cheap either, Ms. Brinley said.
A 240-volt home hookup that can fully charge an electric vehicle in about 9 hours costs between $700 and $4,000.
Trying to charge an electric vehicle with a 110-volt station would take more than 24 hours, she said.
Lack of charging infrastructure combined with the relatively higher cost of electric vehicles over gas-powered engines has relegated most buyers to early technology adopters or people trying to make an environmental statement about driving an emission-free car, said Rebecca Lindland, executive analyst for the car-valuing and shopping site Kelley Blue Book.
“Consumers don’t see the value,” Ms. Lindland said.
Mr. Fought said it would take four-to-six years of high-mileage driving for fuel savings to pay for the extra cost of an electric vehicle. The battery pack on an electric vehicle can easily exceed $8,000, Ms. Lindland said.
California has made electric-vehicle ownership more attractive with state tax credits on the cars, regulations requiring more emission-free vehicles on the roads, and special highway lanes for commuters, Ms. Brinley said.
Driving performance, especially with Tesla, is perhaps the biggest allure that electric vehicles offer, said Christopher Chaney, senior vice president of the San Diego-based survey and data analytics company Strategic Vision.
Electric vehicles have instant acceleration because the power from the accelerator goes directly to the wheels rather than the accelerator causing the engine to spool up and provide the power to the drivetrain.
Most electric vehicles are owned by families with three or four cars because they often are driven more for fun than for practical reasons, Mr. Chaney said.
Tesla recently surpassed 200,000 vehicle sales over its history being the largest of all pure electric carmakers.
General Motors’ Chevrolet Volt and Bolt expect to hit 200,000 in sales this quarter, a bitter-sweet milestone because the vehicles will soon be only able to offer half the full $7,500 tax credit as is the case with Tesla.
The tortoise-like growth in sales of modern-era, plug-in electric vehicles, a technology now a decade old, is not deterring automakers from pouring billions of dollars into the technology.
A study released this summer by management and consulting company AlixPartners found that carmakers intend to spend $255 billion in research, development and facilities to bring 207 electric vehicles to market globally by 2023.
GM alone plans to have 20 electric vehicles on the road by then, CEO Mary Barra said this year.
At that level of investment, with consumer appetite still sketchy, there will be carmakers that lose billions on their optimism, said Mark Wakefield, AlixPartners global co-head of automotive and industrial.
“While almost every automaker is developing electric vehicles, we believe that billions could be wasted on the road to electrification,” Mr. Wakefield said. “Announcements to date indicate that more than 200 EV models will be launched, yet very few will succeed and an even smaller group will be profitable.”
Mr. Chaney also is skeptical how much Toledo residents will be participating in the clamor because northwest Ohioans know from experience that car batteries sometimes act funky in winter.
“There’s a perception out there that cold weather and batteries don’t mix,” he said.
Contact David Barkholz at dbarkholz@theblade.com or 419-724-6134 or on Twitter @barkholzatAN.
First Published October 20, 2018, 4:33 p.m.
