Although the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is encouraging the widespread adoption of electric vehicles, Ohio is lagging significantly in EV sales and registrations.
But one local business is doing well by specializing in used EV sales.
Maumee-based Price Pro is the second-largest used car dealer in northwest Ohio and, according to its president, Denny Walerius, is probably the largest seller of used EVs.
The company was founded in 2014. Sixty percent of its sales are to local buyers with the remaining 40 percent coming from people all over the country.
In 2022, the most recent year for which statistics are available, less than 1 percent of vehicles registered in the Buckeye State were electric. At present, 6.8 percent of all vehicles registered in the United States are electric. Ohio ranks 32nd among the 50 states for per-capita electric vehicle registrations.
The EPA has stated that the auto industry could meet the agency’s 2032 emissions targets if 56 percent of new vehicle sales were electrics, 13 percent were plug-in hybrids, and gasoline-powered cars were made to be more fuel efficient.
The goal of the ambitious tailpipe standards is to reduce the amount of planet-warming carbon emissions and lower health-care costs by drastically reducing environmental pollutants.
Christine Senack, the EV ambassador for Yark Automotive Group, cites “range anxiety” and a lack of robust charging infrastructure as primary reasons Ohioans are reluctant to switch to electric vehicles.
“If I want to drive to Columbus from Toledo, I can get there on a single charge. But if I want to get back, I am going to have to recharge. And between Columbus and Toledo, there is only one place to charge along the way.”
Ms. Senack likens the planning she has to do to take interstate trips in her electric Subaru Solterra to the calculations Americans once had to perform when taking road trips in internal combustion vehicles.
“You used to use a AAA TripTik to plan your route and figure where you would stop for gas. But now we don’t worry about that anymore,” she said.
Her comments about EV hesitancy are supported by a poll conducted by the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center. The poll found that about half of U.S. adults cite worries about range as a major reason not to buy an EV, while about 40 percent either believe EVs take too long to charge or don’t know of any public charging stations near their homes.
State transportation officials are working to put more charging locations in place.
”We have consistently heard that range anxiety caused by insufficient charging stations was a key factor for folks considering an EV,” said Breanna Badanes, the managing director for communications and policy with the Ohio Department of Transportation.
Ms. Badanes said that the federal National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program requires states to install a fast-charging station at least every 50 miles along major routes.
But range anxiety may not completely account for Ohioans’ reluctance to go electric.
“Ohio used to have a slogan that said it was ‘the heart of it all,’ Ms. Senack said. “It wants to believe it is reflective of the country at large. And the country overall has been pretty clear that it doesn’t want EVs.”
Ms. Senack also thinks that the high prices associated with new EVs are deterring people from purchasing them.
But according to Mr. Walerius, prices on used EVs have come down dramatically over the last 18 months. That, coupled with the $4,000 tax credit many customers can receive from the federal government, is driving more people to take a second look at EVs.
Mr. Walerius believes that Ohio’s low EV adoption rate is largely because of the state’s geography.
“EV adoption in general is overwhelmingly highest in major metropolitan areas where people spend lots of time in their cars, but don’t drive a lot of miles,” he said, citing Boston as an example.
“Our ideal buyer is someone who returns home and charges their vehicle at home every night. We still don’t have a lot of charger locations in the state.”
At present, Mr. Walerius’ Price Pro dealership has 57 used EVs on the lot, including Tesla, Polestar, Mercedes-Benz, Chevrolet, Kia, Audi, Jaguar, Nissan, Hyundai, Volvo, BMW, Mini, Genesis, and Ford models.
Price Pro’s approach to vehicle sales is as unusual as its product line.
“Ours is a fixed-price business,” explained Mr. Walerius. “We advertise our best price on every car. There’s no going back and forth with a sales manager.”
The dealership’s sales force is trained in the intricacies of the federal EV rebate program, which changed recently so that the credit is applied at the point of purchase, rather than at tax time.
Mr. Walerius is a native of the Toledo area and attended Toledo Christian High School. After a short stint at the University of Toledo, he went to work for Bob Schmidt Chevrolet, where his first job was washing cars.
He’s been in the auto sales business ever since.
“I think there’s a lot of interest in and skepticism about EVs,” he said. “Some people have predetermined ideas about what they’re like. We decided to concentrate in used EVs because we perceived it as an underserved market.”
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