A quiet reversal is showing up in the data on people who have already gone electric. The share of battery electric owners who plan to make their next car a hybrid or plug-in hybrid rose from 23 per cent in 2025 to 28 per cent in 2026, according to the EV Index published by mapping company Here Technologies and consultancy SBD Automotive.
The survey covers more than 4,000 drivers in the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Britain, India and Australia. The number is not a rejection of electric cars. It is a measurement of what happens when a buyer has lived with one.
The product holds up. The infrastructure does not always
The survey’s most useful finding is the gap between expectation and experience. Sixty-eight per cent of electric owners say charging in practice is better than they feared, and 67 per cent say the same about range. Owners are, on average, more positive than they were before buying.
So the defection is not about the car. It is about the certainty around it. A public charger that works on most days is worth less than one that works on the day of a long drive, and a plug-in hybrid removes that risk while keeping the electric commute. For a household with one car, that trade is rational.
Loyalty still dominates. Sixty-four per cent of electric owners say they are likely to buy electric again. That average hides a wide spread: 87 per cent in Britain, 78 per cent in Germany, 48 per cent in Italy. The ranking tracks charging build-out and how long each market has been selling EVs, not how much drivers like the technology.
The other end of the funnel is worse
Among drivers who still own combustion cars, only 17 per cent name a battery electric model as their most likely next purchase or lease.
That is the number that matters for volume. A market where one in four existing owners hedges and five in six combustion owners stay put is a market that grows slowly, regardless of how good the cars are.
Robert Fisher, senior consulting manager at SBD Automotive, frames it as a confidence problem rather than a technology problem. Most owners would buy again, which is encouraging, but when they start treating hybrids as their next car, the industry needs to understand which journeys the electric car failed to cover.
Brussels is loosening at the same time
Policy is moving in the same direction as the buyers. On 16 October, France and Germany agreed to relax the EU requirement for a 100 per cent cut in new car tailpipe CO2, a rule that in practice would have ended new combustion car sales. Key European Parliament committees have also approved proposals softening the 2035 target.
That creates room for hybrids and plug-in hybrids to stay on sale longer than the original framework implied. It also creates a credibility problem. Transport & Environment, the Brussels campaign group, argues that plug-in hybrids emit close to conventional petrol and diesel cars in real-world use, well above the official figures.
If the rules loosen on the assumption that a plug-in hybrid is a 80 per cent electric car, and the real figure is closer to 30 per cent, then the climate arithmetic does not close. The comeback of the hybrid is either a buffer for the transition or a dilution of it, and that is a regulatory decision, not a consumer one.
What buyers actually count
The purchase reasons in the survey are unromantic. Better value for money was cited by 36 per cent, lower running costs by 34 per cent, environmental benefit by 33 per cent. Around 70 per cent said rising fuel prices had increased their interest in electric cars.
Brand origin still shapes consideration. Japanese brands were considered by 73 per cent of respondents and European brands by 69 per cent, Korean and American brands by 63 per cent, Chinese brands by 45 per cent and Indian brands by 42 per cent.
Consideration is not purchase, and Chinese brands have been gaining share in exactly the price segments where value ranks first. But the survey suggests the remaining barrier in Europe is not product capability or price. It is whether a buyer believes the brand will still be there in year seven, with parts and software support. That is a slower thing to build than a factory.
Editor’s note: This is an adapted translation of the original Gasgoo report. It has been trimmed and restructured for readability for an international business audience. The full original (in Chinese) is at https://auto.gasgoo.com/news/202611/13I70477903C501.shtml.