Electric vehicles are gaining ground nationally, but rural America is not buying in at the same pace. The gap between rural and urban EV adoption sits at roughly 40 percent, and new research suggests the divide has less to do with practical limitations than with deeply held misperceptions about what EVs can actually do. That disconnect matters because rural drivers log more miles per year than their urban counterparts, meaning they stand to benefit the most from lower fuel costs. Yet they remain the least likely to consider going electric.
What 1,000 Rural Residents Actually Think About EVs
A peer-reviewed study published in Scientific Reports surveyed approximately 1,000 rural Michigan residents and found that only about 5% would choose a battery EV as their next vehicle. The researchers documented widespread misperceptions about two specific issues: whether a Level 2 home charger was feasible for their property, and how far away the nearest public fast charger actually was. When the team modeled real charging infrastructure against respondents’ driving patterns and budgets, the results told a different story. Many of these drivers significantly overestimated costs and underestimated how well an EV could fit their daily routines.
The Michigan researchers concluded that perception, not reality, is the primary brake on rural EV sales. Several respondents believed no EV existed within their reported budget range, even though multiple models would have qualified. A companion summary from the University of Michigan team emphasizes that better information about vehicle prices, charging options, and total cost of ownership could move a meaningful share of skeptical drivers into the “maybe” or “yes” column. This finding challenges a common assumption in the EV debate, that rural resistance is purely rational and driven by genuine infrastructure shortfalls. In Michigan, at least, a significant share of the resistance appears to stem from outdated or inaccurate information about what is already available.
Charging Gaps Are Real, But Uneven
Misperceptions do not exist in a vacuum. Rural charging infrastructure genuinely lags behind urban networks, and federal data confirms it. The Alternative Fuels Data Center tracks EV charging station counts by state and shows that growth in rural counties has been far slower than in metro areas, especially for fast chargers that make long-distance travel practical. The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Charging Forward toolkit identifies the core barriers: site selection difficulties, grid constraints, dispersed travel patterns, and the sheer complexity of navigating federal funding eligibility. These are not abstract planning concerns. They translate directly into longer distances between chargers, which feeds the anxiety that keeps rural buyers away from dealership lots.
The problem compounds when chargers that do exist prove unreliable. Research from UCLA’s Institute of Transportation Studies found that EV chargers in underserved communities are not just scarce but also more likely to be broken, leaving drivers stranded or forcing them into long detours. A driver who plans a trip around a charger only to find it offline will not quickly trust the network again. That reliability gap reinforces the very misperceptions the Michigan study documented, creating a feedback loop where poor experience validates skepticism, and skepticism discourages the investment that would improve experience.
Federal Funding Stalls at the Worst Time
Congress authorized $5 billion through the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program to build out charging along highway corridors, with states receiving formula funding. But the rollout has not been smooth. A GAO decision found that the Federal Highway Administration’s pause on approving state EV infrastructure deployment plans constituted an impermissible withholding under the Impoundment Control Act, concluding that NEVI obligations arise by operation of law and cannot be unilaterally frozen. That legal finding exposed a tension between executive discretion and congressional intent that left states in limbo during a period when construction timelines already stretched thin, particularly for projects in sparsely populated regions.
For rural communities, the delay carries outsized consequences. Urban areas can attract private charging investment because the business case is straightforward: more cars, more customers, faster payback. Rural stations rarely pencil out without public subsidy, which means federal dollars are not a bonus but a prerequisite. The DOT’s own rural EV toolkit acknowledges that funding complexity and grid limitations make rural deployments harder to plan and execute, often requiring close coordination between utilities, local governments, and state agencies. When that funding stalls, rural projects are the first to slip, widening the gap the program was designed to close and reinforcing the perception among residents that the EV transition is something happening “somewhere else.”
Automakers Pull Back as Rural Demand Flatlines
The demand signal from rural America is influencing corporate strategy. In 2021, GM and CEO Mary Barra announced a plan to go all electric by 2035, positioning the company as a leader in the transition. That timeline has since softened as legacy automakers across the industry scale back EV commitments after years of ambitious pledges and multibillion-dollar investments ran into slower-than-expected consumer uptake. According to S&P data cited by Automotive News, U.S. buyers registered 1.3 million EVs in 2025, representing a 7.8 percent share of the new light-vehicle market, down slightly from 8 percent the prior year, signaling that early-adopter enthusiasm is no longer enough to sustain aggressive growth targets.
Rural hesitation is a big part of that plateau. Automakers depend on pickup and SUV sales in less densely populated regions, and those customers remain wary of range, towing performance, and cold-weather reliability (concerns often amplified by word-of-mouth and social media anecdotes). When rural dealers report that test drives are rare and orders even rarer, manufacturers respond by delaying plant retooling, slowing battery investments, or prioritizing hybrid models that feel like a lower-risk bridge technology. That feedback loop means the very communities that could benefit most from lower fueling and maintenance costs see fewer model options and slower improvements in charging coverage.
Bridging the Rural EV Divide
Closing the rural EV gap will require more than building chargers and waiting for attitudes to change. The Michigan findings suggest that targeted information campaigns, grounded in local realities, can shift perceptions. State agencies and utilities can use tools from the Department of Energy’s technology integration programs to pilot workplace charging, support fleet conversions, and run ride-and-drive events that let residents experience EVs in familiar settings. When potential buyers see neighbors plugging in at the feed store or school parking lot, abstract claims about range and reliability begin to feel more concrete and trustworthy.
At the same time, policymakers need better data on how rural households actually use vehicles. The Department of Energy’s energy modeling initiatives are designed to capture regional differences in travel patterns, grid capacity, and economic conditions, which can inform smarter siting of fast chargers and more realistic timelines for infrastructure buildout. Pairing that analytical work with local input—farm bureaus, tribal nations, county officials, and rural transit providers—can help ensure that investments align with real-world routes, from school bus circuits to grain elevator runs. Without that kind of granular planning, rural residents are likely to keep seeing EVs as a mismatch for their lives, even as the technology itself becomes more capable.
Ultimately, the rural EV divide is not just a story about who buys which cars. It is a test of whether the energy transition can deliver tangible benefits to communities that are geographically dispersed, economically diverse, and often skeptical of top-down mandates. The evidence from Michigan and from national infrastructure data points in the same direction: the barriers are as much psychological and institutional as they are technical. If policymakers, automakers, and local leaders can correct misperceptions while addressing genuine gaps in charging access and reliability, rural drivers could move from reluctant holdouts to central players in a lower-carbon transportation system.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
