Before the U.S. and Israel launched their war in Iran, the national average for a gallon of gas was $2.94. One month later, gas is now averaging $3.98 a gallon—the largest one-month jump in U.S. gas prices in the last 30 years.
Setting aside the horrors of the war itself—more than 1,000 Iranians have been killed, along with more than a dozen U.S. servicemembers—the spike in gas prices is doing something climate advocates have been trying to do for decades: making people seriously consider electric vehicles.
Search traffic for electric vehicles was up 20 percent the week following the initial attack on Iran, according to Bloomberg News, with search interest doubling for Tesla Model-Y and Chevrolet Equinox cars. By mid-March, nearly one in four car shoppers were researching electric vehicles, according to Edmunds, a car shopping research platform. That’s the highest level of EV interest recorded so far this year.
It's not hard to see why. At $4/gallon, the math on switching to an EV starts to look pretty compelling: The average American would spend nearly $2,000 a year on gas, compared to as little as $540 to charge an EV1. And it’s never been cheaper to own an EV, especially as the used car market is now flooded with pre-owned zero-emissions vehicles.
But interest and action are two very different things. Despite the surge in searches, new EV sales are actually down nearly 27 percent compared to this time last year—a hangover from the Trump administration's decision to repeal federal EV tax credits last fall. One analyst told the Boston Globe that gas would need to climb above $5 a gallon, and stay there, before most drivers seriously pull the trigger.
And there's another reason people aren't making the switch, one that's harder to fix with policy: persistent misinformation.
That's the issue we're tackling on this week's podcast. First, we debunk a couple of the most popular and persistent myths about electric vehicles—including one that half of all Americans currently believe. (ICYMI: feel free to revisit our two-part guide to EV misinformation, published back in 2024, for even more debunking).
Then, we sit down with Dr. Christian Bretter, an environmental psychologist from the University of Queensland in Australia, who doesn't just study what people believe about EVs—he studies why they believe it, and what can actually be done to change their minds.
The answer, it turns out, has less to do with facts and more to do with how you deliver them. Emily learned something about her own communication style that she did not love hearing. Listen, watch, or read the transcript below to find out what it was.
Text transcript
The transcript below is our interview with Dr. Chris Bretter. You find our full episode transcript here.
Emily Atkin: Our guest today is Dr. Chris Bretter. He’s an environmental psychologist who led a 2025 study seeking to figure out how pervasive EV myths really are, why people believe them, and most importantly, what can be done to stop them.
So you’re an environmental psychologist. What is that?
Chris Bretter: That’s a very good question. So I guess the broadest question of what I’m doing every day is asking, why do some people behave environmentally friendly, while others don’t? And how can we make those who don’t behave environmentally friendly, behave more environmentally friendly in the future?
EA: So you studied how actual human people feel or think about electric vehicles. Tell me a little bit about the questions that you were really interested in asking and why you wanted to study this.
CB: So we know electric vehicles are a big part of the transition to a sustainable society, but we also know that the adoption hasn’t been great. And we also know that there is a lot of misinformation out there, driven by several institutions that sort of spread misinformation about electric vehicles. And that might be part of the reason why the adoption has been fairly slow.
So with this work, we were just really interested in how much of this misinformation that is out there actually sticks in people’s minds. In other words, how much do people actually believe in that sort of stuff?
So we tested a range of different myths and checked how many people believe in those.
EA: Give us the quick rundown. Who did you survey? What did you ask them and what did you find?
CB: We sent out a survey in four different countries: the US, Germany, Austria, and Australia. And we asked people about the endorsement of nine myths of electric vehicles, on the standard scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree.
What we found is that, of all of the responses across the countries from 4,000 individuals, over a third—so 36 percent of responses—were in agreement. with myths that are demonstrably false, or at least misleading.So more than a third of people believe in things that are clearly wrong.
EA: Like what?
CB: One of the biggest myths is that electric vehicles are actually worse for the environment because of their production process. But also statements such as, “electric vehicles are more likely than petrol cars to catch fire,” which is again wrong. So, these are clearly items that are circulating in the media and that people believe, unfortunately.
EA: Wait, so more than a third of people believe that EVs are worse for the environment than gas?
CB: So that particular statement varies a bit by country, but yes—around a third of people agree with that statement that the emissions that are caused during the production process of an electric vehicle outweigh the benefit of the electric vehicle later on.
EA: Wow. How many people believe that EVs are more likely to catch fire?
CB: This was actually the most endorsed piece of misinformation. And if I’m not remembering incorrectly, it’s 50 percent, at least in each country of responses, we’re in agreement with that statement. So half of the people surveyed.
EA: Damn. Are there any other big claims that you found were pretty rampant?
CB: We measured various claims alongside the negative health effects of electric vehicles, sort of with the magnetic fields and stuff like this. And these were actually the least endorsed items, but still sort of around 20 percent of people endorsed a claim that electric vehicles lead to bad health outcomes such as cancer due to the electric magnetic fields. And that again has been sort of disproven by research and still, but still 20 percent is still a lot of people.
EA: I hadn’t even heard that one. What is that? Like the electric car battery is emanating some sort of electromagnetic field?
CB: Yeah. And it does emit electric electromagnetic fields, but they are not strong enough to cause any sort of negative health outcomes for either birds or humans. But yeah, so people actually believe that, 20 percent of people believe that electric vehicles can give cancer due to the electromagnetic fields.
EA: To birds? Did you say birds?
CB: Well, there was another statement, electric magnetic fields harm birds when you drive by on some level. So that was another statement they asked and 20 percent of people believe that as well.
EA: Why are people all of sudden pretending to care about birds? It’s like the windmills thing. All of sudden the people that never cared about birds in their whole life are like, “the windmills are killing birds!” And now the electric cars are killing birds.
Anyway. How do people’s beliefs actually impact the reality that we’re seeing on the road? Did you get any information about how much these beliefs impact people’s buying of cars or people’s support for policy?
CB: We looked at the correlation between people’s endorsement of misinformation and their support for pro-electric vehicle policies, and also their intentions to buy an electric vehicle in the future.
There was always a negative correlation, That’ means that the more people endorse misinformation, the less they are pro-EV policies, and the less they intend to buy electric vehicles in the future.
It is important to mention that these 4,000 people were all non-EV owners. So these people didn’t have an electric vehicle at the time of the survey. However, we repeated the survey—just in the US though—with a sample of 2,000 people, where we then split the sample between people who already owned an electric vehicle and people who did not. And what we found was contrary to what we expected—namely, that there is no difference in misinformation endorsement between people who already own an electric vehicle and people who do not.
You would expect that, once you own an electric vehicle, you basically have done your research and you know the misinformation, but this is not the case. So EV owners do still believe in misinformation, in these myths.
EA: Did you get any more information about why that is?
CB: So we have to speculate on this, but one reason might be that once you own an electric vehicle and you tell your friends, “I just bought an electric vehicle,” then you might be more susceptible to discourse and misinformation. So imagine you go to a garden party, and then your friend tells you, “you know electric vehicles are much more likely to catch fire than petrol cars, did you know that?”
EA: Did you at all look into why people believe misinformation about EVs?
CB: We looked at the factors that influence people’s endorsement of misinformation. And one of the largest or the largest predictor of why people believe in misinformation is what’s called a conspiracy mentality.
This is basically the systemic mistrust of elites. So people who are more mistrusting of elites, more suspicious of what government officials are doing behind closed doors, what organizations are doing behind closed doors, tend to agree more with misinformation statements. That’s along with other factors such as political ideology, conservative political ideology and other factors.
Interestingly, education and scientific literacy didn’t play any role whatsoever. And that’s again, contrary to what many people would believe. So it’s not that these people are uneducated. It is simply that ideologies are taking over.
EA: That’s interesting. It’s not like people are stupid. It’s not like people are believing stuff because they haven’t read a book or they’re not paying attention. They’re paying attention.
What do you mean by conspiracy mindset? Can you talk a little bit more about that?
CB: A conspiracy mindset is basically the mistrust towards people and institutions of power. And basically it refers to the fact that people believe that what is told as an official story by, for example, the government or institution is not really the full truth. And that’s fueled by past experiences, as there were some conspiracy theories in the past and the last decades that were true.
So this basically mindset of distrusting elites, distrusting people in power is particularly associated with misinformation endorsement. And what makes this particularly dangerous is that this distrust has been shown in the past to be very difficult to be addressed, because you can’t just go to a person say, “look, this is conspiracy,” or “you should be more trusting of people in power,” because there are instances where people in power abuse that power as well. So it’s quite difficult actually to address that.
EA: Well, I hear you describe a conspiracy mindset and I’m like, so… me?
CB: Well this is not a binary thing, right? We are all somewhere on the spectrum of conspiracy mentality. It just depends on if you are stronger on that spectrum. So if you have a stronger conspiracy mentality, odds are you also believe to a stronger extent in misinformation about electric vehicles.
EA: So what is the best way to make all this stop? What have you found if anything can be done to lessen this?
CB: So we basically tested two interventions on how we can, if at all, reduce misinformation endorsement about electric vehicles.
What we’ve done is, we’ve taken one and half thousand people and allocated a third of them to a condition where they interacted with ChatGPT for three rounds about electric vehicles. In the second condition, we just gave them a fact sheet of the US Department of Energy, a myth busting fact sheet. And in the third condition, people just interacted with ChatGPT about sports. So that was sort of the control condition where we didn’t expect any sort of effect.
We found that both the fact sheet condition and the ChatGPT condition where people interacted with ChatGPT about electric vehicles resulted in lower endorsement of misinformation compared to the control condition—roughly 10%, if I’m not mistaken. And that stuck across a period of 10 days. So potentially, this is just obviously a preliminary study, ChatGPT or a fact sheet are quite effective in reducing endorsement of misinformation, and that lasts at least for 10 days.
EA: I’m not sure how comfortable I am that chat bots are the solution to this.
CB: Yeah, I know. But ChatGPT was actually quite good at, almost better than humans sometimes, in having empathy with people. It’s saying look, you may believe that electric vehicles are more like to catch fire, I understand where you’re coming from. But have you thought about these sources here? So it’s very empathetic and it doesn’t judge.
EA: Tell me if I’m taking too far of a leap here scientifically, but if Chat GPT has the ability to deprogram people’s brains or at least make them think differently because it tends to be empathetic, maybe the answer is more empathetic communication, not treating people as idiots for believing things that are necessarily wrong. Because your research has shown that it’s not because people are idiots.
CB: Exactly. 100 % I agree with you. Yeah. I think in general, we need to be more empathetic with people who believe misinformation. Because if you tell them that they’re basically stupid, borders come up and then you will never get to these people again.
EA: And that’s helpful for me too as a reporter because, I’ve been debunking misinformation for a long time. And sometimes it gets frustrating and I’m a little snarky lady. So sometimes when I’m debunking, I’ll have this tone about me that’s a little eye-rolly. Like, “can you believe people believe this after so long?” And it’s probably pretty off-putting.
So it’s a good reminder that the research shows that I should stop being such a bitch.
CB: That’s well put. It’s just about having empathy with people, right? And not assuming that they are stupid just because they believe in certain of these things. And remember, there’s always a small kernel of truth to it as well, right? That doesn’t mean that all of it is true, but there’s a certain element of it which is true if you look at it in isolation.
EA: Absolutely. And it also makes me think about, I have friends that believe things that I think are misinformation, specifically about vaccines, et cetera. Right? When I speak to them, I always have empathy. I am never eye-rolly. And I think maybe what your research is saying to me as a communicator is, speak to people as if you would speak to your friends. It goes a long way. Computer is doing better at that than you are.
CB: Yeah. And one of the reasons might be because you have a history with your friends, right? And you know where they’re coming from, you know what they’ve been through and these types of things.
EA: Well, this was very informative. Thank you for joining us, Chris. We’re so happy to have you.
CB: Thanks for having me.
The average American drives 260 miles per week, costing roughly $37/week in fuel for a car that gets 28-miles-per-gallon. That costs about $1,925 a year at the pump. To get a 260-mile charge at an average electricity rate of $0.16 per kilowatt hour, it will typically cost between $10.40 and $13.87 a week, depending on the vehicle’s efficiency. That means it will cost anywhere from $540 to $721 a year to charge an EV, saving car owners more than $1200 compared to their gas counterparts.
