Southern Californians who drive the most are slowest to switch to electric vehicles

Nearly a third of drivers in the rural Riverside County city of Anza are considered gasoline “superusers,” each burning more than 1,200 gallons of planet-warming gasoline per year and spending nearly 20% of their annual income to commute. And just 0.1% of vehicles owned by Anza residents so far are electric.

But over in the pricey Los Angeles County city of San Marino, just 2.5% of drivers are superusers, each spending less than 6% of their income on fuel. And 5.7% of drivers in San Marino now have electric vehicles — more than double the statewide average.

These disparities are spelled out in a new online tool from the nonprofit Coltura, which pairs gasoline consumption and EV ownership rates with demographic data for every ZIP code in California.

The findings aren’t necessarily surprising. While maintenance costs are significantly lower with an EV, and state and federal incentives can help, the purchase price for electric vehicles can be 20% to 50% more than comparable gas-powered vehicles. There also are challenges around charging EVs in many apartments and rented homes. So for now, wealthier Californians are much more likely to own them.

But the searchable map from Coltura offers a first-of-its-kind, granular look at how those trends are playing out for each community. And it makes one thing clear: The communities that drive the most, and are the most burdened with the cost of gas, are transitioning to EVs at the lowest rate.

That means if California wants to hit its climate targets and quickly make a serious dent in greenhouse gas emissions while getting the biggest bang for our buck from taxpayer-funded EV incentives, Janelle London, co-executive director of Coltura, said we should be focusing on getting gasoline superusers into electric vehicles.

Using an incentive to help a commuter from Fontana to switch to an EV, for example, would reduce significantly more emissions than using that same money to motivate a work-from-home Anaheim Hills resident to add an electric vehicle to their garage.

To that end, Coltura is driving support for Assembly Bill 1267, which would allow superusers to receive additional funding if they qualify under existing state EV incentive programs. After meeting income thresholds, London explained they’d simply have to show odometer readings, which can be combined with vehicle information on file to figure out who’s averaging at least 700 gallons of gasoline a year and landing among the top 18% of gas users statewide.

The bill, authored by Assemblyman Phil Ting, D-San Francisco, doesn’t specify how much that additional incentive would be, leaving it to the California Air Resources Board to calculate and apply starting Jan. 1, 2025 if it gets signed into law.

AB 1267 passed through two committee hearings with unanimous, bipartisan support, with London noting that residents of red-leaning rural areas stand to benefit the most if the legislation passes. Supporters should find out next week if the bill will move on for a vote in the all-important Appropriations committee.

California last year passed a law that will ban the sale of new gas-powered vehicles starting in 2035. In the meantime, London said Coltura’s data tool also suggests we’re using the wrong metrics to track progress around reducing transportation emissions.

Right now, most governments are measuring success by the number of EVs sold, assuming each one displaces an average amount of gasoline consumption per vehicle. But the typical EV driver travels about 10,000 miles a year, she said, while the average superuser drives 24,000 miles a year. So London said it makes more sense to set, track and incentivize goals around gasoline reduction.

Minus a dip during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, London noted that gasoline consumption on average has stayed pretty flat for the past three decades.

“We’re in this hair-on-fire climate moment, when we’re supposed to be cutting emissions from all sources,” London said. “But gasoline use isn’t going down. And no one seems to be doing a lot about that.

“Just counting EVs, that feels like the absolute wrong metric,” she added. “We should be looking at the metric of gasoline consumption. How many gallons are being burned? And how can we take that number down?”

In Orange County, where 4% of vehicles are electric, superusers make up 8.2% of the driving population and account for nearly 24% of the county’s gas consumption. So getting that 8% of drivers into EVs would reduce vehicle emissions in the county by nearly a quarter.

London hopes this data also could be used to prioritize placement of EV charging stations, which has been a focus of the Biden administration and recent federal funding packages. Most gasoline superusers live in places where single-family homes are the norm and home charging is practical. But London said range anxiety for those drivers remains real, and putting public charging stations in high-profile spots near lots of superusers makes sense.

Similar economic divides exist with charger placement as with EV ownership, creating a persistent chicken-before-the-egg problem.

California is one of only 11 states that has at least one public EV charger in every county, according to a new study from car retail site Bumper. The state has a total of 13,985 stations with 37,680 charging ports, per the study. And California is No. 5 in the nation in terms of EV chargers per capita, with 12.3 chargers for every 10,000 people.

But distribution is not equal across communities, Bumper found, with a significantly higher percentage of chargers in wealthier counties than in lower income counties. For example, San Bernardino County has just 6 charging ports for every 10,000 residents, versus a ratio of 11.8 per 10,000 in Orange County and 26.56 per 10,000 in Napa County.

Coltura found one bit of encouraging news in the data that surprised London. Nearly 40% of heavy gasoline users in California are now driving sedans, crossovers and hatchbacks, which already have electric counterparts readily available on the market. That means, unlike with truck or big SUV owners, they could make the switch without having to change the size and functionality of their vehicles.

A lot of education still needs to take place, though, London said.

“There’s this really kind of entrenched notion that EVs are not affordable,” she said. “But if you’re a superuser, the whole calculation is different.”

When her team does outreach, London said they regularly talk to superusers who aren’t considering EVs because they assume they’re not in financial reach — even though they’re paying an average of $500 a month on gas and another $300 a month on maintenance and repairs. Some 56% of superusers in California are below the state’s median income level, Coltura found, with heavy commuters who make under $50,000 a year spending an average of 23% of their income on gas.

Coltura has a tool on its website that lets drivers input basic information and get an estimate as to how much, if any, they’d save by trading their gas vehicle in for an EV.

For many “gasoline-burdened families,” London said some outreach and extra help with an EV down payment could pay big dividends, both for the neediest Californians and for the climate we all share.

Source: Orange County Register