Or, more accurately, if there were more quality EV's we would buy more. Over priced short range weirdmobiles don't count. The pent up demand for a real EV at a lower price point is huge, as the Model 3 reservations prove.
There are a lot of people out there who wouldn't really consider an EV unless it was better than an ICE. I was pretty much in that group when I started looking. Hybrids and non-Tesla BEVs force the consumer to make sacrifices to get better fuel economy or to switch to pure electric. It's a meme the car companies want to perpetuate which is also echoed by a lot of people on the left that if you want to save the world, you need to sacrifice a lot. In the case of cars, you need to sacrifice range, performance, and/or cargo space to be environmentally conscious. And the car companies have complied by making people sacrifice their dignity also.
Then along comes Tesla with a car that out performs ICEs in most areas, has more cargo space than other ICEs, and while it doesn't get as far on a charge, they have a workable compromise for long distance. That appeals to the people who otherwise wouldn't consider an EV. Except for the price, you not only don't need to compromise, you can get even more car than any ICE.
When I started looking for a car, I thought I would be eliminating a lot of cars due to size because I have very long legs and end up with horrible lower back pain on long trips if I don't have enough leg room, but I thought I would be able to replace my 1992 Buick with something that had: at least the same acceleration (0-60 in about 8s), at least 80% the cargo space (20 cf trunk), at least 25% better gas mileage, and I preferred a sedan not an SUV. I had noticed many cars have a lot more HP than they did 24 years ago, and they have gotten smaller, but with the addition of more computerization, I expected more improvement in gas mileage than I found.
In the end only 1 car even met all the above criteria: the Model S and it blew most of my criteria away. That's what sold me. Driving an economical car will get me a lot less flak in the Portland area where that's a big deal to a lot of people and I do believe we should be moving away from fossil fuels for economic reasons as well as the impact on the environment nobody can disagree with (oil spills, train fires, refinery fires, leaking oil onto the roads, smog, etc.), but I work from home and only need a car for long road trips to California (it looks like I'll be making a number of them in the next year or two) as well as a good car for local errands. I wouldn't be burning all that much gasoline no matter what I bought. I just didn't want a gas guzzler on principle.
There are other types of buyers of hybrids and BEVs (other than Tesla), but the cars are marketed primarily to eco buyers who expect to get a crappy driving experience compared to an ICE. When gas prices were high, people were making the sacrifice and buying hybrids to get better gas mileage, but now that gas prices (especially in the US) are down, they are back to buying ICEs creating a slump in the hybrid/BEV market, except for Tesla.
And I don't consider specialty, limited production hypercars that may be EVs or hybrids. Those cars are only marketed to the super rich who have a large garage full of exotic cars. Even major manufacturers can afford to make a few of these and they won't put the slightest dent in their ICE sales.
