The US electric vehicle market has slowed down for a number of reasons — pricing and affordability concerns, lack of adequate charging infrastructure, budding competition in international markets. Barron's Senior Writer Al Root and Gabelli Funds Portfolio Manager Brian Sponheimer join Market Domination to talk about what could propel American EV demand forward.

Sponheimer describes the EV market as a well of "a great amount of uncertainty" as automakers navigate near-term challenges. Root adds that American EVs are just not as affordable as Chinese counterparts, underlining the overcrowding in China's auto market by its own developers.

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Market Domination.

Editor's note: This article was written by Luke Carberry Mogan.

Video Transcript

JULIE HYMAN: Obviously, we know that the EV market has slowed down, right? Tesla is the poster child for that. I guess, is there any other case to be made now about when growth could be maybe re-accelerating?

BRIAN SPONHEIMER: Yeah. I think-- and first of all, Julie, thank you for having me on. I know we have a little bit of a disconnect on the audio side here. But clearly, as you mentioned, we're in a situation where EVs have fallen into a middle period, where we've seen early adoption primarily in coastal states, where tax incentives have helped boost those sales. And now we're in this period where the rest of the country needs to follow suit.

And with about 50% of the US not having garages and range anxiety being a real thing, it's really a time-will-tell sort of scenario for the EV market to create a great amount of uncertainty. And certainly, as we've seen with the automakers pushing out some plans for some of the massive amounts of CapEx that are needed to build out for this expected growth, it's really the next three to five years have a lot of unknowns that we are-- we're going to live through. And so we're looking for other areas within the auto space to potentially participate.

JOSH LIPTON: Now, same question to you, I'm just interested, what do you think explains the slowdown in EV demand that we've seen, Al? And what do you think maybe re-accelerates it?

AL ROOT: I think a few things. One of which is, you know, you can almost go back to the euphoria of 2001, 2002, when Tesla could sell anything it could make, it could charge anything. And I almost think that sent a false signal to the industry. I can make $50,000 EVs, I can make $60,000 EVs, and they'll fly off the shelves. The metaphorical shelves dealer lot.

And what we found now is we have a dearth of cheaper EVs in this country. It's not the problem in China. The problem in China is there's too many EVs fighting for market share. That's been an issue for Tesla here we don't have $25,000, $30,000 EVs. Plus, Brian's range anxiety and some of those challenges in the middle of the country with adoption.

And you see Q1, Q1 sales still grew. They're up about 8% year-over-year for all electric vehicles. But they're not even anywhere close to the dreams of '21 and '22.

JULIE HYMAN: And so I guess, Brian, the question is then do you make your decisions in the auto industry based on overall sales, right? Do you look at strategy for hybrids which have seen this resurgence, for example?

BRIAN SPONHEIMER: Yeah. I think it's a good question. We look at the entire ecosystem, whether it's the 16 or so million units that are going to get sold this year and the new side, whether it's the 37 to 40 million units that are going to get sold within the used vehicle market. And that's been a really big challenge for the past three years. And then there's about 290 million vehicles on the road in the US. So we take really kind of a look at the entire market.

But speaking just about the new vehicle market, what we know is whether those vehicles are going to be internal combustion engine vehicles sold, whether they're going to be hybrids, whether they're going to be electric vehicles, they are-- they're going to need to be serviced. And I think customer engagement and customer connection is going to be really important.

So we look in areas like the automotive dealers as ways to be really propulsion agnostic with great cash flow generative businesses, where whether an automaker outside of, let's say, Tesla that does not have a dealership. Whether they sell an ICE vehicle, a hybrid, or an EV, those dealerships are going to be there for the warranty period and help drive customer engagement and share of wallet.