American Drivers Still Want Gasoline

Issue #179

If you had to buy a new car today, would it be a gasoline-powered option or an EV? The answer to this question speaks volumes of US buying tendencies. 

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Market News

• Stellantis scraps plug-in hybrids, despite the lineup being a good seller for the company. Here’s more. 

• Odometer fraud is again on the rise, and some states are more affected than others. This article explains which are most prone to this. 

• The average new car was $50,326 in December. It was a record-setting number. 

• Ram’s CEO loves V8s, but he also said “electrification is fantastic,” and here’s how it will take over, according to him. 

• The new, cheap and refreshed Chevy Bolt is hitting dealerships soon and people are excited.

Safety and Recalls

• Rivian techs following the wrong instructions, one driver got hurt and it sparked a massive recall. Here’s more. 

• BMW recalls the X3 because the steering wheel moves, even when the car is still.

• Chevy recalls more than 80,000 vehicles because of a defective pedestrian alert system.

Car Culture

• You can still buy new V12-powered cars in the US, but they are few and far between. Here’s the list. 

• A Toyota Supra spun and crashed against a Toyota Corolla then slammed into a Toyota dealership. The video is shocking (everyone is fine). 

• If you could describe 2025 using cars, which would you use? This article has the answer for you. 

• These are the best racing movies for gearheads. Have you watched them all?

• What are the most powerful trucks in the market today? We made this list.

Video Of The Week

Can you build a cheap, fun offroader in 48 hours? James Pumphrey thinks he can. 

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In The Know

​American Drivers Still Want Gasoline

What do the Jeep Grand Wagoneer and Volkswagen ID.4 have in common? Nobody wants them. Well, not “nobody,” but VW only sold 248 units in Q4, while Jeep sold 5,133 Grand Wagoneers in all of 2025. These are part of the worst-selling cars in the country and they are all either electric or hybrid, as the list shows. 

The reality is that Americans love gasoline engines. We’re not talking about hybrids or diesels. No, as this article explains, Americans want gasoline power, with 61% of them still picking an internal combustion engine for their next purchase.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise, as the most popular vehicle in the US is once again the Ford F-Series. We even crunched the numbers to see whether this claim was true.  

If we dig deeper, analyzing what each state likes to buy, we’ll see that gasoline cars dominate the market. Only 14% of the 50 states have a purely electric vehicle as the bestseller. These states are Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Jersey, Utah and Washington. The rest have some form of internal combustion.

Side note: Toyota and Ford better be careful with Honda as it’s growing fast in sales. In 2025, it was the most popular vehicle in 13 states, tied with the Ford F-150 for number one. So, while it didn’t beat the RAV4, it might do so in 2026.

So, does this mean that the most popular cars will always be gasoline-powered? Not necessarily. If we go back to the survey, amongst those 61% of buyers, a big reason for their preference is that gasoline-powered cars are cheaper.

EVs “shot themselves in the foot” by being more expensive. After the credits ended, they became unappealing, given their price and typical issues such as range anxiety and charging stations. However, GM and Hyundai proved that there’s interest in EVs. This table shows all EV sales outside of Tesla.

That’s why the discussion around cheap EVs is so hot right now. After all, we discussed this before: the EV segment needed this adjustment to understand that a cheap EV is the way to go.

It seems many are listening.

What do you think?

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