Nearly 46% of American EV owners say they are “very likely” to switch back to a gas-powered vehicle, according to McKinsey’s 2024 Mobility Consumer Pulse survey of over 4,000 US respondents. The top complaints are predictable infrastructure gripes: inadequate public charging (35%), high total ownership costs (34%), and the logistical headache of planning long trips (32%). On the other side, only 16% of US adults say they are likely to buy an EV as their next car, per AAA’s 2025 survey — a figure that has been falling, not rising. Both figures are intent proxies, not direct regret measures, which makes the 30-point delta less certain than it appears.
The McKinsey number deserves heavy caveats. InsideEVs and other analysts noted that the survey’s “switch back” framing may capture people who want to add a gas car to their household fleet, not necessarily abandon electric entirely. The respondent pool skewed toward newer, non-Tesla owners — people who bought affordable EVs on lease deals but lack home charging and rely on patchy public networks. J.D. Power’s competing 2025 EVX study found that only 12% of EV owners would consider an ICE replacement — implying action regret closer to 4–12%, not 46%. The 2026 J.D. Power study raised BEV repurchase intent to 96%, leaving only about 4% who would not consider another EV. The gulf between 46% wanting to “switch back” and the 4-12% who won’t consider another EV or lean toward ICE suggests the McKinsey question is measuring something broader than pure regret.
The asymmetry may also be transient. Early adoption of any technology produces higher buyer’s remorse because infrastructure, pricing, and product quality are still maturing. Gas cars benefit from a century of sunk-cost infrastructure that makes inaction nearly frictionless. If charging networks densify and battery costs continue falling, the action- regret rate will likely compress. For now, the data says what it says: most gas-car owners feel no pull toward EVs, and a large minority of EV owners express interest in returning to gas — though whether that constitutes regret or merely flexibility remains genuinely unclear.