~55% Of EV Enthusiasts Likely To Buy/Lease Tesla Model 3

March 13th, 2016 by Zachary Shahan

There are certainly EV enthusiasts out there who aren’t Tesla fans (as hard as that is for me to understand) and who don’t intend to buy a Tesla. However, a survey of potential EV buyers showed that the majority plan to buy a Tesla. in fact, the majority plan to buy a Tesla Model 3!

Chris Boylan, our newest author, just highlighted 6 reasons the Model 3 is so attractive and will likely be a huge (or perhaps “yuge“) success. I think that basically covered things, but I’ve been planning to write this piece, so am piggy-backing on his great post to highlight that statistic above + a few others as we excitedly await the Model 3 unveiling that is just 2½ weeks away.

The findings highlighted above are from our Electric Cars: What Early Adopters & First Followers Want report, and were shared in a broader January article.

Naturally, the Model 3 stands out because it will be affordable, will have 200+ miles of range, is assumed to have impressive performance, and has the “cool factor” of a Tesla. It’s hard to tease out how much each factor plays into the still-mysterious car’s high demand, but that’s sort of the point. A truly mass-market electric car can’t only have a low price tag, can’t only have strong performance, can’t only have long range, and can’t only have access to a superfast charging network (of which, there’s only the Tesla Supercharger network) — it needs to have all of those things. As it stands, the Tesla Model 3 is the only announced car to have that “full package.”

Coming back to the EV enthusiast surveys we conducted, in addition to the above, just over 50% of our respondents indicated a strong preference for cars that offered over-the-air software updates (which only Teslas offer at the moment), and large percentages greatly valued various autonomous driving options. There was also heavy preference for the option to upgrade one’s battery pack after a few or several years.

Here are charts on how important some of those factors are/were to the EV drivers and potential buyers who we surveyed, as well as an extra one on preferred car classes:





And putting it all together:











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