As electric vehicles surge on Minnesota roads, a policy U-turn from Trump looms

Jonathan Schmelz grew up in the car business. As a kid, he washed cars at his family’s Twin Cities dealership, Schmelz Countryside Volkswagen, Alfa Romeo and Fiat.

He’s now owner of the Maplewood auto seller, where, for the past few years, the Volkswagen ID.4 — an electric crossover SUV — has been the top-selling car.

“When the car launched in 2021, electric vehicles seemed like the wave of the future,” Schmelz recalled. “We had a two-year wait for them.”

Customers lined up for a test drive.

EV sales are growing in Minnesota. Last year a record 16,000 thousand EVs were sold in the state— 7.6 percent of all car sales.

And manufacturers have tried to make EVs appealing, said Schmelz. They’ve invested over $100 billion in the technology over the past five years, spurred forward by federal government incentives. Prices have plummeted. And there are myriad options now, with over 100 EVs available in the U.S. market.

But the rate of sales growth is slowing. And so is the excitement over them.

“I just don’t think that the consumers are rushing to get on that bandwagon as fast as they had predicted they would,” Schmelz said.

Dealers have invested millions of dollars into their facilities and upgraded their service equipment to prepare for a surge in EV sales, said Scott Lambert, president of the Minnesota Automobile Dealers Association.

“But the EV revolution just has not happened yet,” he said.

Minnesota has made electric vehicle adoption a key part of its strategy to reduce carbon emissions in the transportation sector, which is now the state’s leading contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, which drive global climate change.

But the state is not on pace to meet its goal for 20 percent of cars and trucks to be electric by 2030. At last count there were about 66,000 EVs on Minnesota roads, fewer than one percent of all vehicles.

And now, new industry headwinds are blowing in from Washington.

On the first day of his administration, President Donald Trump signed an executive order calling for an end to an “electric vehicle mandate.” Former President Biden set a goal of achieving 50 percent EV sales by 2030.

Trump has called electric vehicles a “hoax,” and something promoted by “radical left fascists,” despite his recent purchase of a Tesla, the EV manufacturer led by White House advisor Elon Musk.

Industry experts anticipate the Trump administration to end the federal tax credit for EVs, along with other supportive policies, including a change to car emissions rules that spurred automakers to sell more electric vehicles.

“The reversal of support from the federal government is bound to slow down EV growth, to have a chilling effect on it,” said Moaz Uddin, senior electric vehicle policy specialist at the Great Plains Institute.

‘A PR problem’

The news is not all negative. Minnesota, along with Illinois, is a leader in EV sales in the Midwest, although it still lags national sales, where electric vehicles made up about 10 percent of the market last year.

While there isn’t data yet for 2025, sales accelerated toward the end of last year. In Minnesota EVs made up more than 8 percent of the market during the last quarter of 2024. And in December, EVs achieved a 12 percent market share nationwide, a record sales month.

“So clearly, there’s growth all the time here,” said Jukka Kukkonen, a Minnesota-based EV market consultant who teaches at the University of St. Thomas.

But Kukkonen and other experts acknowledge that the industry is battling a perception issue.

“A lot of people still believe that EVs are expensive, elite vehicles. So we have a bit of a PR problem with this industry,” explained Uddin.

In reality, half of all EVs are now priced under $50,000. That’s the average price for a passenger car in the U.S., Uddin said. And that’s before applying the current federal tax credit, with a maximum value of $7,500.

Many EVs can now be leased for $300 or less per month. That’s cheaper than any gas-powered vehicle at his dealership, said Schmelz, the car dealer, and less than some people spend just on gas.

So what’s holding people back from making the switch?

“Minnesota is a cold state. There’s just no getting around that,” said Scott Lambert, president of the Minnesota Automobile Dealers Association. “The technology is good. It’s very good. But they lose a lot of their range capacity in cold weather.”

Battery capacity in cold weather can drop around 30 percent. Many car buyers still worry their car could run out of juice and leave them stranded, said Lambert, who argues Minnesota needs to invest more in its public charging network.

“That would really go a long way towards promoting the sale of these vehicles. It’s very difficult to get one of these cars and have to map out where you’re going to charge,” Lambert said.

EV advocates agree that so-called “range anxiety” continues to be a roadblock for some consumers. But they argue that this is another example of a perception problem.

“That was a valid concern 10 years ago, when the range of EVs was less than 100 miles on average,” said Kukkonen. “Now the average range of a new EV is over 280 miles. How often do I drive 280 miles a day? Practically never.”

Even in winter, if that range drops to around 200 miles, he said virtually all car trips are still short enough where the charging can be done at home.

“People are charging EVs just like they charge their cell phones,” Kukkonen said. “You come home in the evening, you plug it in in the morning, it’s full.”

EV headwinds

Kukkonen remains bullish on EVs, simply because the driving experience is so superior to a conventional vehicle, he said.

“They’re smoother, they have more power, better acceleration,” he said.

Kukkonen said once drivers make the switch, 90 percent never go back to a gas-powered vehicle.

But impending policy changes from the Trump administration are expected to put a damper on EV sales.

In addition to cutting the federal tax credit, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is expected to end emissions policies that encourage auto manufacturers to make and sell more electric vehicles.

A recent Princeton University study concluded that those two actions combined could cause EV sales to drop 40 percent by 2030, compared to a scenario where current policies are continued.

“I certainly am concerned. I think already we were at the point where we couldn’t afford any delays, and this is certainly going to take us off that aggressive timeline,” Uddin said about meeting state targets.

The Trump administration has also paused funding to build a fast-charging network around the country.

The Minnesota Department of Transportation has already received $10.5 million of those funds to work with private businesses to build charging stations along the I-94, I-35 and I-90 corridors to help reduce “range anxiety.” Construction is expected to begin on the first 12 stations this summer.

The state has spent an additional $7 million on charging infrastructure.

But an additional $55 million promised the state from the federal government is on hold. Updated guidance is expected this spring.

“We are monitoring each announcement and working to determine what impacts those decisions may have on our projects and work, but we have concerns that any delay in federal funding could impact projects and timelines,” MnDOT said in a statement.

But despite these challenges, EV advocates don’t expect sales growth to stop. Car manufacturers have invested billions of dollars in EVs. The technology is constantly improving, and prices have dropped significantly.

“So that’s where I'm really hopeful,” said Uddin. “Certainly, with some government support, we could continue to move even faster. But if that is not the case, then we'll just have to rely on states and local governments to try to fill that public sector gap.”

Then the question becomes whether more consumers will make the switch to electric.

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