Less than a quarter of Michiganders plan on buying an electric vehicle any time soon, and more than half oppose spending tax dollars on the government-imposed transition.

The results from a new poll commissioned by The Detroit News and WDIV is the latest evidence “people in Michigan are more aligned at this point with Donald Trump than they are the Biden-Harris administration on this issue,” Oakland University political scientist Dave Dulio told The News.

Trump told the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee last month he “will end the electric vehicle mandate on day one,” if elected in November, a move he said is focused on “saving the U.S. auto industry from complete obliteration, which is happing right now, and saving customers thousands and thousands of dollars per car.”

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The telephone survey of 600 likely general election voters conducted July 22-24 found 71% have no plans to buy an EV, while 24% would consider one for their next vehicle purchase, and 5% are unsure.

Nineteen percent of those avoiding EVs expressed concerns about charging and range, 18% cited higher initial costs, 5% noted performance concerns during cold weather, and 11% do not trust the emerging technology.

“I’m not ready for the change,” Mackinaw City resident Sherrie Endreszl, 57, told The News. “I like tried-and-true and what I know is dependable.”

“I don’t want somebody mandating that I have to drive a specific type of car, or telling me I can cook on a certain type of stove,” said Endreszl, referring to President Joe Biden’s push to impose higher efficiency standards for vehicles and appliances that effectively ban traditional products.

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Michigan, a must-win battleground state in the 2024 presidential election, is investing billions of taxpayer subsidies in the EV industry through secretly negotiated contracts with the Whitmer administration and Democratic lawmakers.

While much of the funding is flowing to the Detroit Three automakers at Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis, other subsidies are directed to companies with ties to the Chinese Communist Party and slave labor in China, despite widespread opposition from local residents.

Those subsidies are in addition to federal tax credits for EV purchases, billions for EV chargers, manufacturing subsidies, and other incentives the Biden administration has leveraged to prop up the industry.

The News noted in early July that $5 billion the federal government spent on EV chargers over the last three years produced a mere 11 power stations across seven states, with none in Michigan.

That doesn’t sit well with 56% of Michiganders who oppose the government using tax dollars to force a transition to EVs, compared to 35% who support the spending.

Clarkston resident Eric Sorenson, 44, noted a distinct difference between taxpayer subsidies for industries like agriculture and the government pumping tax dollars into EV companies and initiatives.

“I think food is a required, important thing,” he said. “You know, if you don’t maintain the fields, you don’t maintain the crops, its’ going to be bad from year to year,” Sorenson said. “But I think if we didn’t have electric cars by 2030 that it’s going to be a huge difference in our country.”

The Detroit News poll is only the latest to quantify the opposition to electric vehicles in Michigan, where most folks are not big fans of the government-imposed transition or Whitmer’s spending.

An EPIC-MRA poll of active and likely Michigan voters released in mid-July found 55% disapprove, 40% approved, and 5% were undecided, WLNS reports.

That poll followed a week after Remington Research Group surveyed 584 likely 2024 general election voters in Michigan and found 63% oppose gas vehicle bans, and 68% describe a candidate’s position on the issue as “an important factor in their vote.”

Another University of Michigan policy survey from May found 61% of Michigan’s local government leaders don’t view planning for a transition to EVs as an especially important priority, with 51% pointing to a lack of interest among residents.

In April, Marketing Research Group released a Michigan poll for spring 2024 that showed only 5% of voters plan to purchase an EV in the next five years, while 15% said they would consider it.

“It appears that government and the auto industry are out of sync with Michigan consumers,” said Tom Shields, MRG’s senior advisor. “The state has a long road ahead to reach Governor Whitmer’s goal of 2 million electric vehicles on the roads by 2030.”

Through the first quarter of 2024, there was a mere 46,792 registered EVs in Michigan, or about 2% of Whitmer’s goal. The situation means Michigan would need to register about 29,000 EVs every month for 67 straight months to fulfill Whitmer’s wishes.

But sales numbers are slowing, and EVs are piling up in dealership lots, both bad signs for a Michigan economy that relies heavily on automotive manufacturers.

“West Michigan’s largest cyclical industry is automotive, and we don’t assemble cars in West Michigan, but we have numerous firms that produce components and complete assemblies like seats and dashboards, MacPherson struts and those kinds of things,” said Brian Long, who conducts a monthly business survey for Grand Valley State University that showed declines in two key indicators in June that suggest “over the long term, production is going to stop.”

“Especially for the firms that are supplying EVs, the news of the dealer lots starting to fill with an overflow of EVs is certainly not good news,” Long said.

Other warning signs include Ford’s loss of $132,000 on each of the 10,000 EVs the company sold in the first quarter of 2024, the company’s plans to scale back an EV battery plant in Marshall by $1 billion, a recent survey illustrating buyer’s remorse among 46% of EV owners, and a Bridge Michigan analysis showing $1 billion in Michigan taxpayer subsidies paid out so far has created only 200 jobs out of 12,000 promised.