THE NON-EV BUYER'S GUIDE

Your next car doesn’t have to be electric. We found six gas-powered vehicles that will take you well into the future

- DAVID MUHLBAUM

All the buzz about new cars these days seems to be about electric vehicles. But there are car shoppers in America who say not only do they not want an electric vehicle now, they don’t want an electric vehicle ever. How many? Hard to say. But if the number of letters Kiplinger’s has received after it has written about electric cars is an indicator, it’s a sizable group. And our correspondents’ reasons go beyond the oft-cited pragmatic considerations of limited range, difficulty recharging and price.

Arguments from these EV rejectors range from “EVs get an unfair advantage because their owners don’t pay gas taxes” to “I’d rather not have my garage or house incinerated by the big lithium batteries in those vehicles” to “their weight is a danger to others.” Other concerns include how those batteries are produced, as well as the impact on the power grid. Doug Briskman, for example, watches long coal trains rumble through his city of Richmond and doesn’t want the power for his next vehicle coming from that source. “Getting rid of internal combustion vehicles in a matter of years is a crazy notion, and we are not ready for it in so many ways,” Briskman says.