You’ve plugged your electric vehicle into your home charger and hit the sack. Overnight, high winds topple a power line. Your charger blacks out. Then, a report of a fire, followed by an evacuation order. Your battery’s only charged to 25%. And it’s your only car.
Such are the fears some California car buyers are expressing amid the fires that have devastated Los Angeles County and forced people to evacuate their homes at a moment’s notice.
A gasoline car “can evacuate in any direction on any road and still get fuel when needed,” said Matthew Butterick, a Los Angeles attorney who lives near Griffith Park. “The EV stations on evacuation routes would have massive lines and delays, gasoline stations less so. And the electric grid may not be available. Power companies turn off power to avoid sparking a fire and also to avoid legal liability. This is probably the future of all the hillside neighborhoods.”
His sentiments were echoed by Val Cipollone, who lives in the wooded hills above Berkeley. She owns a Nissan Leaf, a full electric vehicle with a roughly 220-mile range, which she plans to sell.
“Who knows how far you’d have to drive” after a disaster, she said. “I used to think I’d only need to drive to my place of work. But who, knows, I might have to go much farther.”
To replace her EV, she’ll said she’ll buy a hybrid car or a plug-in hybrid. She won’t consider a traditional gasoline car, though. “It’s a good conscience thing,” she said, citing the environment. “I wouldn’t feel comfortable buying one.”
Fires aside, plenty of potential car buyers are attuned to Cipollone’s concerns. As U.S. sales of traditional fossil-fueled cars and light trucks plummet (down from 17 million in 2015 to 12.9 million last year), EVs and hybrids have taken off, but in the last couple of years, as EV growth has slowed, hybrids are on a tear.
Hybrid sales were up 63% in 2023 and 29% in 2024, to 1.8 million, according to automobile data company Edmunds. For the same years, EVs were up 34% and 13%, to 1.2 million. As recently as 2022, U.S. EV sales were growing 45%.
Although EVs could well return to torrid growth as vehicle prices decline and public charging networks are built out, the industry now appears to have exhausted the early-adopter market and must appeal to mainstream buyers, said Edmunds analyst Jessica Caldwell.
EVs “require a different relationship with your vehicle than people have had before. They require a lot more planning,” Caldwell said. This includes setting up a home charger, which sometimes requires an electrical upgrade; calculating routes for longer distance travel to find where charging is available; searching for working public chargers when charging stations are jammed or chargers are inoperable.
That may improve as a multibillion-dollar federal government program to install public chargers every 50 miles along Interstate highways is built over the years. If California’s plan to subsidize chargers at multi-family dwellings takes off, and if those chargers prove reliable — a big if — EVs could attract more mainstream buyers.
But for now, Caldwell said, “a lot of people are not ready to make a lifestyle change. They want to go green but maybe they’re not ready to go full electric.”
Veloz, a nonprofit group pushing the adoption of EVs, said in a statement that disasters will put “a strain on all infrastructure” and that zero-emission vehicles are key to mitigating the impacts of climate change.
“I think there’s some value in having a hybrid when you only have one car,” Margaret Mohr, communications director at Veloz, said in an interview. “However, they wouldn’t get the full benefits of an electric vehicle, and there’s still going to be long lines at the gas pump in an emergency.”
Most big auto companies, however, are hedging their bets on full electrics. Ford has slowed its EV rollouts and sped introduction of hybrid vehicles. (Already, more than 20% of Ford F-150 pickup sales are hybrids.) Hyundai, whose Ioniq 5 and other mid-priced electric cars are selling well, recently introduced what it calls is the Hyundai Way program, meant to offer an array of powertrains, with an emphasis on hybrids and plug-in hybrids.
Hybrids are “a big part of our strategy,” said Randy Parker, newly named head of Hyundai and Genesis Motor’s North American operations. Hyundai hybrid sales were up 46% in 2024, while EVs rose 28%, he said. “We’re trying our best to meet customers where they are,” Parker said. The company is not giving up on EVs, he said, predicting a return to faster growth “as consumers get more comfortable with the infrastructure.”
The battery in a traditional hybrid car works with the gasoline engine to improve mileage. The battery in a plug-in hybrid can travel some distance on battery power alone.
Customers will have more choices in hybrid cars this year, said David Greene, analyst at Cars.com. A wave of new hybrid models is coming online in 2025, both traditional hybrids and plug-ins. (Both types marry a small car battery with an internal combustion engine, resulting in fewer emissions and better gasoline mileage. A traditional hybrid doesn’t need to be plugged in; it uses the gasoline engine to recharge. But it can’t run on the battery alone. A plug-in hybrid has a larger battery — typically 30 to 50 miles in range — and can power up overnight with a regular 110 volt home outlet. It can run on the battery alone until the battery is depleted and the combustion engine takes over, commuting distance for many buyers.)
Hybrid growth is driven mostly by Toyota, Greene said, and not only the Prius line — the OG of hybrid cars — but the Camry, the Highlander, the RAV4 and other popular models as well. (In fact, the Camry is available only with a hybrid powertrain.)
What effect the Los Angeles fires might have on powertrain choices is yet to be determined. “I don’t think [the fires] will have a mass effect” on EV sales, Caldwell said. However, some people will find appeal in the notion that “you have your gas tank filled, you’re out of there, and you don’t have to worry about filling up for 300 miles.”
Count Butterick among them.
“I just refueled my car,” he told The Times when the Hollywood Hills Sunset fire broke out. “I wouldn’t want to evacuate in an EV.”
