utoPacific’s FADS data show that among Republicans who do NOT want an EV, only 13% say political beliefs are a reason they don’t want them. Rather, cost and charging/range anxiety - the usual EV rejection reasons - top the reasons among Republicans to reject an EV.

And contrary to popular perception, politics don’t seem to play much into Republican shoppers’ attitudes towards EVs.

With Republicans now dominating shopper consideration for the Tesla brand, and with Tesla expected to remain the dominant leader in EV sales for years to come, it explains why EV shoppers are now most likely Republicans.

With Tesla’s continued dominance in the EV space, it may very well be that - ironically - Republican shoppers end up being a lifeline for EVs in the U.S. market.

Indeed, Tesla consideration among EV intenders in 2024 was virtually swapped, with 49% of Tesla considerers who intend to get an EV identifying as Democrats and just 28% identifying as Republicans.

Digging through our FADS data, we found that 48% of Tesla considerers are Republicans, while only 32% of Tesla considerers are Democrats.

While Tesla alienated many potential Democrat customers, the EV maker clearly gained Republican fans in 2025.

Some of the sales decline is due to the same pressures that applied to all EVs in 2025, but there is also no doubt that Tesla boss Elon Musk’s very loud and headline-making embrace of extreme far right politics alienated many shoppers and contributed to Tesla’s sales losses around the world.

While Tesla has been notable for its steep sales declines in 2025, it must be noted that Tesla still accounted for a whopping 44% of all U.S. EV sales in 2025.

That intuitively seemed strange as so much of the anti-EV rhetoric of the last few years has come mostly from the political right, so we dug deeper into the data to get the real story.

And the story has everything to do with Tesla.

We were a bit surprised to see in our latest Future Attribute Demand Study that EV intenders (those who will not just consider, but actually intend to buy one) are actually now more likely to be Republican than Democrat. Specifically, 43% of EV intenders are Republican while 36% are Democrats.

Thanks for sharing, John!

Thanks for sharing, Chad!