Actors Timothée Chalamet and Larsen Thompson are stranded on the side of a highway with a broken-down motorcycle in EV startup Lucid’s 2025 “Driven” ad campaign.
They sneak into a nearby warehouse and abscond with Lucid’s Gravity SUV in the action movie-style commercial that highlights the vehicle’s performance, technology, and range.
“Holy sh—!,” Thompson exclaims as Chalamet leads them on a high-speed chase, escaping into the desert.
This type of messaging may become more common in a market that’s at an inflection point. Many consumers who were motivated to adopt cutting-edge tech and ditch their gas-guzzling vehicles for environmental reasons have already gone electric. Now, the industry is tasked with attracting mainstream consumers who no longer have the benefit of tax credits to offset the higher up-front cost of electric models.
“The power, the performance, the technology, the general desirability: These are the things that I think EV marketing should be talking about,” Ed Kim, president and chief analyst at automotive marketing research firm AutoPacific, told us.
“Everybody’s gotta get on board,” he added. “So take the messages that are potentially politically polarizing out of the equation.”
Tough sell
Domestic automakers are pumping the brakes on EV investments—and hitting the gas harder. Ford, General Motors, and Jeep-maker Stellantis have incurred billions of dollars in writedowns after backtracking on electrification plans. On Thursday, Honda reported that it anticipates a $15.7 billion hit from realigning its EV strategy.
These shifts are being driven by market conditions and federal regulatory changes that make electrification a more difficult proposition for buyers. The Trump administration has rolled back tailpipe and fuel efficiency standards, nixed EV tax credits of up to $7,500, and reversed Environmental Protection Agency findings that underpinned the federal government’s climate policies. After those changes, EV sales fell nearly 50% from Q3 to Q4 2025, according to AutoPacific.
The firm forecasts that EVs’ market share will drop to 7% in 2026—the first expected annual decline since 2011, shortly after the Nissan Leaf, the first mass-market EV in the US, went on sale.
At the same time, dozens of electric models are on the market, including new entrants. No. 1 US automaker GM, for example, offers choices ranging from the ultra-luxurious (the Cadillac Celestiq starts at about $340,000) to the sub-$30,000.
“For a long time, the automakers basically didn’t really have to market and sell EVs, because people walked into the dealership or…into one of their stores intending to buy regardless,” Loren McDonald, CEO and chief analyst at Chargeonomics, told us, adding that those buyers were drawn to new and greener tech, and were willing to deal with reliability issues.
“Now we’ve moved into people…who may or may not necessarily be convinced to get an EV, so they have to be persuaded, educated, convinced, sold, nurtured, etc., to get over that hump,” McDonald said. “I don’t think the automakers—except for Rivian and Tesla and Lucid—have really understood that. They’ve basically marketed EVs the same way they’ve marketed gas cars over the years.”
McDonald argued that, historically, automakers and dealers haven’t done the best job of educating consumers about, say, how to charge an EV.
“It’s almost like learning a new language,” he said. “And the auto industry has just not done a good job explaining it, marketing it, educating people about it.”
New customers
At the same time, a recent AutoPacific analysis identified a potential opportunity for the EV industry: growing interest from Republicans.
The firm’s latest Future Attribute Demand Study found that shoppers who intend to buy an EV as their next vehicle are now more likely to be Republican than Democrat (43% compared to 36%)—a finding so surprising to analysts that they repeatedly reviewed the data to make sure it was correct.
After digging into the data, analysts realized that this trend was largely due to one factor: Tesla and the brand’s affiliation with right-wing politics through its co-founder and CEO, Elon Musk. This shows up as an outsize market trend because Tesla, despite losing market share, still makes up 44% of the US EV market.
“While Tesla alienated many potential Democrat customers, the EV maker clearly gained Republican fans in 2025,” per the report. “Indeed, Tesla consideration among EV intenders in 2024 was virtually swapped, with 49% of Tesla considerers who intend to get an EV identifying as Democrats and just 28% identifying as Republicans.”
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The upshot is that GOP consumers could “end up being a lifeline for EVs in the US market,” Kim wrote.
However, the analysis suggests that Republican consumers’ feelings about EVs actually don’t have much to do with politics. Among those who aren’t interested in an EV, only 13% cited political beliefs as a reason. Instead, they’re turned off by common bipartisan concerns, like cost and issues with charging and battery range.
“For many consumers—regardless of their politics—an EV is simply what they want or need,” Kim concluded. “For others—again, regardless of their politics—an EV isn’t. Maybe now, it’s really becoming as simple as that.”
And with upcoming EV launches like Slate Auto’s affordable DIY truck and a new electric pickup from Ford, McDonald said that while politics may remain a factor in buying decisions, a variety of compelling products could ultimately be the key to winning over hesitant consumers.
Changing message
Though AutoPacific didn’t find much Republican interest in non-Tesla EVs, Kim told us there’s an opportunity to educate consumers about the vast selection of electric models on the market—but first, automakers and car dealers need to get “butts in seats.”
“By and large, EVs are very, very nice to drive, and they have so many of the characteristics that Americans want out of a vehicle. Americans tend to like very powerful vehicles. Americans tend to like a lot of performance,” Kim said. “Well, EVs tend to have those in spades.”
A January report by the International Zero-Emission Vehicle Alliance argued that EV stakeholders need to go beyond highlighting environmental benefits and make a more compelling case for EVs’ advantages over internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles. The report pointed to cost savings, an enjoyable driving experience, and convenience as advantages to spotlight.
Marc Winterhoff, Lucid’s interim CEO, told InsideEVs that automakers industry-wide should focus on touting EVs’ technological and performance benefits.
“I think what we need to do is better explain the superiority of that technology, versus what we have unfortunately done,” he said. “We have said, ‘EV is sustainable, and ICE is not,’ but if you focus on the specs that you get, I think that’s what we need to do as an EV industry to overcome the current ‘winter’ that we see.”
Targeted approach
McDonald argued that traditional automakers have wasted advertising dollars with mass-market campaigns like TV ads. They “have to move to a much more database-driven, much more targeted approach.”
According to Brian Dangers, SVP, client partner at Kantar, that shift is starting to happen, with EV players developing more targeted ad campaigns.
“We’re also seeing more hyper-targeting with social and digital activities, programmatic, etc.,” he told us, “because you have to hit the people where they’re at, and they’re a little harder to reach.”
It’s not enough for auto brands to simply offer an electric model—they need to differentiate their product and message, Dangers said, citing the Lucid “Driven” campaign as a positive example. This could be trickier for non-luxury EVs, because the industry no longer has the benefit of tax credits to help make EVs more affordable.
“What we’re going to continue to see is that evolution from, ‘Hey, this is just an environmentally friendly, good thing to do for the planet,’ toward ‘This is something that’s going to benefit you,’” Dangers said. “It’s going to be luxurious. It’s going to have great performance. It’s going to be able to fit your needs.”
McDonald also believes the auto industry needs to change its messaging on EV costs, which has tended to focus on battery-powered models being cheaper over the long run, despite having higher up-front price tags.
“Nobody said that the Apple iPhone was too expensive and it’s gotta be the same price as the flip phone,” McDonald said. “Why? Because it was a different product that was way better.”
While EV sales can benefit from increased affordability, “we’ve been marketing them wrong,” he added. “We should actually be saying, ‘There’s a reason EVs cost more. They’re better!’”
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