Appealing: Electric Vehicle Buyers Like What They Find, In J.D. Power Survey

The news for electric vehicles is good overall, despite some lingering “range anxiety,” in the 2023 J.D. Power U.S. Automotive Performance, Execution and Layout Study — abbreviated APEAL.

J.D. Power’s better-known Initial Quality Study identifies “things gone wrong.” The APEAL Study identifies “things gone right.”

Other winners in this year’s survey included Jaguar, Land Rover and Porsche, among luxury brands. For mass-market brands, Stellantis’ Dodge and Ram, and General Motors’ GMC came out on top.

Notably, EVs did well in the fuel economy/range category of the study. That’s one of 10 categories in which J.D. Power which asks owners how much they like their vehicles, after the first 90 days of ownership.

Other survey categories include: entering and exiting, interior, powertrain, driving feel, safety, infotainment, and driving comfort.

“What we’re seeing with electric vehicles is that the electric powertrains are doing very well with the consumer,” said Frank Hanley, senior director of auto benchmarking at J.D. Power, in a phone interview in advance of the survey results, which were published July 20.

Consumers in the survey rated vehicles with internal-combustion engines 758 for fuel economy/range on a 1,000-point scale, vs. 797 for battery electric vehicles, J.D. Power said.

Hanley said consumers especially like the greater acceleration electric motors offer, vs. internal-combustion engines.

Taking all categories and all powertrains into account, Jaguar was the No. 1-rated premium brand in the survey, with a score of 887. Porsche and Land Rover were tied for No. 2, at 883.

The Porsche brand deserves extra mention, because Porsche has been No. 1 in APEAL 17 out of the last 19 years. It was also No. 2 in 2018, only 1 point behind Hyundai’s Genesis luxury brand, which really amounts to a statistical tie for No. 1.

For mass-market brands, Stellantis’ Dodge brand was No. 1 in the 2023 survey, at 887, followed by Ram at 873, another Stellantis brand. General Motors’ GMC was No. 3, at 858.

Obviously for electric vehicles, fuel economy/range is a critical reason for being. So, doing well in that category is an important achievement for EVs.

Still, EV buyers worry about range. Verbatim comments from survey respondents include complaints about vehicles which under certain conditions, like cold weather, may deliver less range than promised, J.D. Power’s Hanley said.

Electric vehicles are moving from the fringes to the mainstream of U.S. auto sales. With bigger sales volume and more auto manufacturers — basically, all of them — introducing EVs, it’s getting harder to generalize about EVs as a single product segment.

That’s also true about EV buyers, Hanley said. “EVs are evolving, from more early- adopters to mainstream buyers,” he said. Early-adopters are quicker to forgive. But some of those mainstream, new-to-EV buyers have given less-than-stellar ratings for their electric vehicles, for interior features, and exterior design, he said.

That appears to have been a factor for a year-over-year decline in the APEAL score for the Tesla brand, Hanley said. To date, he said, Tesla models haven’t had big, visually obvious exterior redesigns.

And with more manufacturers offering EVs, Teslas are competing for the first time with brands that have really posh interiors, Hanley said.

Tesla had a score of 878 in the 2023 APEAL survey. That was one of the higher-performing brands in the industry, J.D. Power said, but it’s down 9 points vs. a year ago.

J.D. Power says the 2023 U.S. APEAL Study is based on responses from 84,555 owners of 2023 model-year vehicles that were purchased new, and registered from November 2022 through February 2023. The study was fielded February through May 2023.