Electric Car Owners Are More Likely To Buy A Gas-Powered Vehicle Than A Hybrid For Their Next Car

The strange quirk of the last few years is that a certain segment of the population switched from viewing hybrids as a culture war byproduct and focused their ire, instead, on electric cars. As hybrids have gained mainstream acceptance, there’s a vocal minority of EV owners who are now the ones denigrating the technology.

There’s new data out showing that hybrids remain a decent gateway to electrification and a great one to hybrids. Electric car owners are still most likely to buy another EV, but if they go back to something with a gasoline engine, it’s less likely to be a hybrid.

Some of this might be a cost issue, and Canada is likely to be a test of what Chinese automakers might do to our market in that regard. Currently, there’s one automaker seriously looking to build in Canada, but how serious is now a question. Also at question is how long Honda’s CEO is going to make it, given his bad bet on EVs.

The Morning Dump is a daily news roundup and not a chance for me to exercise my personal grievances. Today will be an exception, because automaker Nissan is putting forth a new luxury experience with the dastardly Tennessee Titans, and I can’t not remark on it.

EV Owners Mostly Want EVs, Except When They Don’t

I enjoy looking at the return-to-market (RTM) data from S&P Global Mobility, which tracks what consumers end up buying when they got back into the market. Overall, loyalty has been trending slightly downwards in the last year. This is especially true for luxury brands, which now lose more customers than they get back.

What I’m more interested in, today, is how EV owners and hybrid owners act when they go back to buy another car. The chart below is a little fuzzy, but you can get a sense of what’s happening.

Overall, EV owners grab another EV when they go to market, although the number that did drop in the second half of 2025, even with the large number of EV purchases pulled forward. Where did those buyers go? About 10% went to hybrids, although a bigger and growing chunk ended up in a gas-powered vehicle.

Because these consumers already have an electric car in their garage, a lot of what is happening here might reflect a lack of hybrid or electric options in certain segments. If you’ve got a Tesla and want an electric minivan or sports car, your choices are somewhat limited.

What about hybrid owners?

While it’s come down a lot in the last half of 2025, hybrid owners are actually a little more likely to buy an EV next than an EV owner is to buy a hybrid. Loyalty to hybrids as a power source is lower than EV loyalty, with fewer than 45% of hybrid owners getting a traditional gas-powered vehicle next.

With a softening of the electric car market after the cancellation, this data suggests that perhaps expanding into areas that aren’t well-served by the market could get returning customers. It also shows that, while EV owners are probably replacing their EVs with other EVs, buyers seem to like to have a non-EV vehicle as their second car.

Canada Rejects Knockdown Kits From Stellantis

Photo: Leapmotor

One of the hallmarks of Stellantis is that it seems to always be working an angle, sometimes at its own peril. Leapmotor is a good example of this. The JV that Stellantis has with the Chinese automaker is expanding to new markets, and this has included sending production overseas. Sort of.

In Europe, Leapmotor tried to take advantage of subsidies for electric cars by building cars in its Tychy, Poland plant. Not full automotive production, but production using knockdown kits. This means most of the cars were manufactured in China with the last step of assembly in Poland. Doing this doesn’t create a ton of jobs as the supply chain stays in China, and European governments eventually said “non” to those subsidies. Leapmotor abandoned Poland when this happened.

I mentioned last week that Stellantis was looking at local production in a plant in Canada that the company took Canadian subsidies for and then abandoned for south of the border. With Canada and China cozying up, this makes a sort of sense. However, Stellantis is trying to avoid having to pay back its subsidy on the cheap by proposing knockdown kits for Canada.

Canada’s response, via Bloomberg, isn’t exactly positive:

“We can’t bring cars in a kit to Canada,” Joly told reporters in Vancouver on Thursday. “It needs to support the local supply chain.”

[…]

Joly said she would only support the return of production at the Stellantis plant if it was backed by both the Ontario government and Unifor, and laid out other criteria for the plant’s future.

“Conditions for workers need to be good, and actually the same as they were and even better,” Joly said.

While some of this is economic, it’s also probably political. If the United States and Canada make up and the US asks Canada to knock it off with this Leapmotor thing, I bet the Canadian government listens. A factory building cars from knockdown kits is way less of an investment.

Honda Exec Asks ‘Why Did We Stop Developing Engines?’

Honda’s plan to electrify in the United States has been mostly a disaster, costing the company billions of dollars. A lot of this was the work of current CEO Toshihiro Mibe. Given the loss of all that money, there’s some grumbling in the local Japanese press that maybe Mibe’s days are numbered.

There’s a big feature in Nikkei Gendai (translated) about what they say is the growing dissatisfaction with Mibe, and it includes some strong recriminations:

[D]iscontent is swirling within the company because of Mr. Mibe’s slow decision-making and the growing distrust stemming from his past statements. One executive commented:

“The president said, ‘There’s no need to develop gasoline engines anymore,’ which caused talented engineers to quit. However, now that the EV market is looking uncertain, he’s going back on his word, saying, ‘Why did we stop developing engines?’ and trying to escape responsibility for his own misjudgment.”

Another executive pointed out, “Toyota responded quickly, for example by postponing the construction of a new battery plant for EVs, but Honda was slow to make a decision. This impairment loss and strategic review should have been done a year ago.”

Honda is a great company in a bad spot. Will the board kick Mibe to the curb in the middle of a crisis? That’s the question.

The Deep Offensiveness Of The ‘Nissan 1960 Club’

Image: Nissan

Growing up, Houston had a football team called the Oilers. With their Columbia blue-and-red uniforms, they were a big part of my youth. That was before the villainous owner Bud Adams decided to relocate the team to Tennessee in order to get a fancy new stadium that Houston was reluctant to build for him.

It was a terrible betrayal, and I’ll never forgive the Titans for it, so when I saw this render from Nissan, I grew angry. Here’s what this is supposed to be:

As the new Nissan Stadium nears its February 2027 completion date, the Tennessee Titans and Nissan officially introduce and share renderings of one of its premium clubs – the Nissan 1960 Club. Named for the year Bud Adams founded the franchise and Nissan Motor Corporation was established in the United States, the club features nods to the storied history of both organizations.

That’s cool about Nissan. I like Nissan. I will celebrate more than 60 years of Nissan in the United States. The Titans are dead to me, though.

What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD

In honor of Houston, here’s Don Julian & The Larks with “Super Slick.”

The Big Question

Could you live with two EVs?

Top graphic images: Tesla; Mazda