Start in January: the year your EV-related programs go from overlooked to indispensable.
By Jason Turner, IDLab
This article contains IDLab forecasts. They’re judgment calls built on current market data and more than 15 years of utility program work, and they’re labeled as forecasts throughout.
On September 11, Saudi Arabia shut down its East-West pipeline, the kingdom’s only export route that avoids the Strait of Hormuz, after drone attacks launched from Iraq. It’s expected to be mostly out of service for several weeks. On the other side of the peninsula, the Houthis have launched a ground offensive to take control of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. Brent crude broke $100.
Oil doesn’t teleport. A tanker that doesn’t leave the Gulf this month is gasoline that doesn’t reach your customers’ pumps next month, or the month after that. The pain arrives on a delay. So does your opportunity.
Here’s what most utilities will miss: an oil shock is the most expensive awareness campaign in the world, and you don’t pay a cent for it. Every customer in your service territory watching the pump click past $60 is getting a vivid, personal, repeated reminder that transportation costs are crushing their household budget.
Most of you already have programs that answer that problem. New and used EV rebates, charging incentives, EV rates, fleet programs. Until now, they’ve been nice to have. Customers skimmed past them on their bill insert.
That’s about to change. Your job is to make sure your customers find those programs when they go looking for relief.
They’ll go looking in January.
IDLab forecast: $5 gas is coming for the new year
The national average hit $4.48 on September 21. Prediction markets already put high odds on the 2026 average topping $4.60. We think it goes further.
IDLab forecast: gasoline approaches $5 nationally by year-end and is likely to break above it as 2027 begins, just as tax refunds start landing in your customers’ accounts. Plus, diesel stays at or near record territory.
Our reasoning:
The seasonal pattern breaks this year. Prices normally ease in the fall once the summer-grade fuel requirement lifts in mid-September. That relief comes from lower demand. This year’s problem is supply, and lower winter demand can’t reopen shipping lanes or refill empty tanks.
It’s already happening. Since September 14, the national average has climbed from $4.32 to $4.48, even after the switch to cheaper winter-grade fuel.
The cushion is thinner. EIA estimates the Strategic Petroleum Reserve fell from about 415 million barrels in Q1 to about 282 million.
The official forecast is already outdated. EIA finalized its September outlook on September 3, a week before the pipeline was hit.
What would prove us wrong: The pipeline and Hormuz flows are restored in October, and reserves start rebuilding before Thanksgiving.
For your customers, $5 gas is a $300-to-$400-a-month problem. For you, it’s an affordability crisis landing on the same households you’re already being asked to protect.
Five forces, one window
The fuel shock is the spark. Five forces turn it into a window, and every one of them makes your programs more relevant.
1. Your customers react fast, and the reaction builds.
In the first week of March 2026, as the conflict began, the share of Edmunds shoppers researching electrified vehicles rose from 20.7% to 22.4% in a single week, driven mostly by battery EVs. The last oil shock shows where that leads if prices stay high: after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, electrified vehicle research on Edmunds jumped from 17.5% to 25.1% in one month.
So what: Fuel prices move research within days, and sustained high prices move it much further. Research comes before buying. The customers researching this winter are the ones buying at tax time. If your programs aren’t visible when that research starts, your customers will make their decision without you.
2. Affordable used EVs are about to flood your territory.
Cox Automotive estimates about 301,000 EVs will come off lease in 2026, nearly triple 2025, and about 589,000 in 2027. EVs are becoming a much larger share of all lease returns: Cox projects about 12% of 2026 off-lease volume, up from about 5% in 2025. The reason they’ll be affordable is depreciation. AAA notes EVs lose value faster than gas vehicles overall. That steep loss is a cost the first owner absorbs and a discount the second owner collects.
So what: For years, the used EV market was too small to matter for mainstream customers. In 2027 it becomes one of the biggest sources of affordable vehicles in your territory. Used car buyers are often the customers most focused on monthly costs, which puts your used EV rebates and income-qualified programs directly in front of the audience your affordability goals are meant to reach.
3. Price parity is here, and the math now favors the EV in year one.
In March, the average used EV sold for $34,653, within $1,012 of the average gas car. New EVs tell a different story: they still sold for more than $5,000 above comparable gas models in March. That contrast explains why used EV sales rose 27.7% year over year that month while new EV sales fell 24.7%. Buyers are already following the affordability.
So what: The purchase price was the main objection to EVs. For used buyers, that objection has almost disappeared. A $1,012 gap is less than one year of fuel and maintenance savings at $5 gas, which our model puts at about $1,460. Add your utility rebate, and many customers can close the gap on the day they buy. For your customers, the used EV has become the lower-cost option to own, and your programs can make it the lower-cost option to buy.
4. Tax season is when your customers have money to act.
Over the past 12 years, March has averaged 9.1% of annual new-vehicle sales, second only to December. If sales were spread evenly, each month would account for about 8.3%, so March runs well above a normal month. Refunds are also getting bigger. As of February 6, 2026, the average refund was $2,290, up from $2,065 a year earlier. And the pattern shows up in EVs: new EV sales rose 20% from February to March 2026.
So what: A $2,290 refund is roughly the size of a used EV down payment, or a home Level 2 charger installation, or the price gap between a used EV and a used gas car twice over. Tax season is the one time of year many of your customers have cash on hand to make a big purchase. If your rebates are visible in February and March, your programs become part of how that refund gets spent. If they show up in May, the money is already gone.
5. You are now the incentive.
Until September 30, 2025, federal tax credits were worth up to $7,500 on a new EV and up to $4,000 on a used one. Congress eliminated all of them at the end of Q3 2025. The impact was immediate: after the $7,500 credit ended, new EV sales fell by more than 50%, and U.S. EV sales in Q4 2025 hit their lowest point since the end of 2022. In most markets, your rebates, EV rates, and charging programs are what’s left.
So what: The collapse in sales after the federal credit ended proves one thing: incentives move EV purchases. That influence now sits with you, the utility. For a customer weighing a used EV against a gas car, your rebate may be the only incentive in the decision. Whether you planned for it or not, your programs have become the most important source of EV affordability support in your territory, and your customers can only use that support if they know it exists.
The automakers see it coming. Rumor has it that Tesla is increasing production in Q4. Our speculation: Tesla sees the same surge in new-EV demand coming in Q1 and Q2 of 2027, for the same reasons laid out here. The public numbers point the same direction. Tesla’s Q2 2026 production rose 10% year over year, and deliveries rose 25%.
When the market leader starts building for a spring it can already see, you should be building your programs for that same spring.
For your program team only: the proof case
Read this before you share anything below. These numbers are your internal proof: for budget approval, regulatory filings, and building conviction on your team. Keep them out of your customer marketing. Most of your customers make purchase decisions on a simple bottom line, and a cost-of-ownership spreadsheet in a promotion is how you lose them. Do the hard math here. Give your customers the easy answer.
The used EV vs. used gas car model
| Input | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Miles per year | 12,000 | IDLab assumption |
| Gas car efficiency | 30 mpg | IDLab assumption (favors gas) |
| EV efficiency | 3.3 mi/kWh | IDLab assumption (conservative) |
| Home electricity | 18.2¢/kWh | EIA 2026 forecast |
| Public DC fast charging | 54.2¢/kWh | DCFC Tracker, July 2026 |
| Charging mix | 80% home, 20% public | Qmerit |
| Gas car maintenance and repair | 6.0¢/mi | Consumer Reports, 50K to 100K miles |
| EV maintenance and repair | 2.8¢/mi | Consumer Reports, 50K to 100K miles |
| Electricity price growth | 5% a year | IDLab assumption |
The sources behind these inputs:
- Electricity: EIA forecasts residential power at 18.20¢/kWh in 2026.
- Fast charging: DCFC Tracker put the U.S. average at $0.542/kWh as of July 24, 2026.
- Charging mix: Qmerit’s president says about 80% of EV charging happens at home.
- Maintenance: Consumer Reports found that between 50,000 and 100,000 miles, the typical used-car range, EVs cost 2.8¢ per mile to maintain and repair, compared with 6.0¢ for gas vehicles.
Year one at $5 gas (IDLab base case):
| Vehicle | Fuel | Maintenance | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Used gas car | $2,000 | $720 | $2,720 |
| Used EV (80/20 charging) | $924 | $336 | $1,260 |
| Used EV (home charging only) | $662 | $336 | $998 |
| Your customer’s savings | $1,460 to $1,722 a year |
Your EV customer pays less than half as much for fuel.
Sensitivity to gas prices (80/20 charging, electricity rising 5% a year):
| Gas price | Year-one savings | Months to recover the $1,012 price gap | 5-yr savings, gas flat | 5-yr savings, gas +5%/yr |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $4.48 (today) | $1,252 | about 10 | $5,774 | $6,716 |
| $5.00 (base case) | $1,460 | about 8 | $6,814 | $7,865 |
| $6.00 | $1,860 | about 7 | $8,814 | $10,075 |
Worst case, with insurance included: Insurify finds EVs cost 18% more to insure than comparably new gas cars, about $501 a year. Subtract that at $5 gas and your customer still saves $959 a year, recovers the price gap in about 13 months, and saves about $4,300 over five years.
Every assumption here is tilted toward the gas car, and the EV still wins. Add your rebate and your EV rate, and it wins by more.
Electricity rises. Gasoline sprints.
Someone on your team will raise it, and they’ll be right: electricity prices are going up too. Here’s how they compare, from EIA’s September outlook:
| Fuel Type | 2025 | 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Regular gasoline | $3.10/gal | $3.84/gal | +24% |
| Diesel | $3.66/gal | $5.07/gal | +39% |
| Residential electricity | 17.30¢/kWh | 18.20¢/kWh | +5.2% |
| Commercial electricity | 13.41¢/kWh | 13.99¢/kWh | +4.3% |
Transportation fuel is rising five to nine times faster than electricity. And those petroleum figures were locked in before the pipeline attack.
There’s a structural difference, too. Your prices move through rate cases, on a timeline measured in months and years. Gasoline prices move with every drone and every tanker. One is a slope. The other is a slot machine.
And you have a lever no oil company has: rates. An EV time-of-use rate widens every savings number in the table above. On affordability, you control more of the outcome than anyone else in your customers’ transportation budget.
For your fleet customers: every van is leaking $400 a month
Inputs:
- 20,000 miles a year.
- Gas cargo van at 14.6 mpg, the real-world average Automotive Fleet found for Ford Transits.
- Electric van at 2.0 mi/kWh (IDLab assumption).
- 90% depot charging at commercial rates and 10% public fast charging.
| Per van, per year | Today ($4.48 gas) | At $5 gas |
|---|---|---|
| Gas van fuel | $6,137 | $6,849 |
| Electric van energy | $1,801 | $1,801 |
| Savings per van | $4,336 | $5,048 |
| 10-van fleet | about $43,000 | about $50,000 |
That’s before maintenance. Ford estimates the E-Transit’s scheduled maintenance costs run 40% below a gas Transit’s over 8 years and 100,000 miles. Range isn’t the obstacle your commercial customers may assume, either: Ford found the average U.S. commercial van covers 74 miles a day.
Diesel costs are worse. EIA expects U.S. distillate inventories to stay below the five-year low through much of 2027. For your small business and medium-duty customers, electrification is becoming a matter of survival on thin margins.
The catch only you can solve… demand charges. A fleet that charges at 5 p.m. can wipe out these savings with one bill. That’s why your fleet rates, make-ready programs, and managed charging belong in the package. You’re the only party that can close this gap.
IDLab’s five forecasts for Q1 2027
1. Gasoline approaches or breaks $5 as the new year begins.
What would prove us wrong: Middle East export routes fully restored in October.
2. Q1 2027 becomes the strongest used-EV buying season in U.S. history. The off-lease wave, price parity, tax refunds, and fuel prices all converge.
What would prove us wrong: Gas falls below $3.50 by January.
3. Used-EV buyers recover the price gap within about a year, and sooner if gas passes $5.
What would prove us wrong: Used-EV prices climb faster than off-lease supply grows. Watch this closely: used EV values were up 5% year over year in August as fuel prices pushed demand.
4. New-EV demand rises in Q1 and Q2, and automakers are already building for it.
What would prove us wrong: Q4 production and inventory data show no build-up.
5. Utilities that launch EV programs in January dramatically outperform those that launch in April.
What would prove us wrong: Customer demand peaks before tax refunds arrive, which runs counter to decades of sales history.
Give your customers one front door
Your customers don’t think in program silos. The person buying a used EV in February needs a charger, a rate, and a place to charge on the road, all at once. If you make them find four programs on four web pages with four application forms, a meaningful share of them will give up partway. That’s an affordability benefit you paid for and your customer never received.
Package it:
| Offering | Residential | Commercial |
|---|---|---|
| Vehicles | New and used EV rebates, income-qualified adders | Fleet vehicle incentives, fleet electrification advisory |
| Home and depot charging | Level 2 charger rebates, vetted installer network | Make-ready infrastructure, depot charging |
| Fast charging | Public DCFC buildout and a clear charging map | DCFC for fleets and site hosts |
| Rates | EV time-of-use rate | EV fleet rates, demand charge relief |
| Support | One enrollment path, optional savings estimator | Fleet cost assessment, managed charging |
One landing page. One sequence. One phone number. Every partner who touches your customer, whether an installer, a fleet advisor, or a retailer, should be able to explain your whole package in under a minute.
And make your program pages readable by machines. Your customer shopping in January will ask ChatGPT about your EV rebate before they ever visit your website. If your pages are stale PDFs split by region, the answer they get will be wrong, and they won’t know it. For the details and the playbook, see our recent AI research on utility programs: Your First Audience Is a Machine.
This is your moment to be loud
You’re cautious communicators, by culture and by regulation. That’s usually a virtue. Right now it’s a liability.
When your customers are angry at the pump, “Learn about EV incentives” is wallpaper. It’s the marketing equivalent of whispering in a stadium. The fuel shock has already handed you their attention for free… use it!
Rory Sutherland would point out that people don’t respond to information. They respond to meaning. A rebate amount is information. “Your gas station is going to miss you” is meaning.
Affordability gives you permission. When you’re helping customers cut one of their biggest monthly costs, a confident headline is a public service.
How your message should be layered:
| Layer | Audience | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Headline | Every customer | Stops them. One bold, emotional, true idea. |
| Offer | The interested | Your rebate, your rate, the dollar figure. |
| Next step | The ready | One button: “See what you qualify for.” |
| Detail | The curious few | Estimator and FAQ, linked, never in the ad |
Headlines with some nerve:
Affordability
- “Your gas bill is optional now. Your utility can show you how.”
- “The most affordable way to drive in 2027 plugs into your garage.”
Residential EVs
- “Your gas station is going to miss you.”
- “The cheapest gallon of gas is the one you never buy.”
Used EVs
- “A used EV plus your utility rebate: the fastest way off the gas pump.”
- “Put your tax refund toward never paying for gas again.”
Home charging and rates
- “Your garage is the cheapest gas station in town.”
- “Midnight is when your car fills up on sale.”
Public fast charging
- “Twenty minutes and a coffee. Then back on the road.”
Fleet
- “Every van in your fleet is leaking $400 a month.”
- “Your diesel bill just became optional.”
Bold framing, honest numbers. Every dollar figure and claim must hold up for your territory, your rates, and your program terms before it goes live. Your legal team can sign off on a confident headline. They can’t sign off on a false one.
Why January
| When | What’s happening | What you should be doing |
|---|---|---|
| Now to December | Fuel prices climbing, automakers building inventory | Build, approve, and fund your package. Brief partners. Fix your program pages. |
| January | New-year budgets reset, customers start researching | Launch everything. |
| February to April | Tax refunds land, peak buying season | Promote hard. Optimize weekly. |
| May onward | Window narrowing | Measure, report to leadership and regulators, scale what worked. |
If you launch in April, you show up after your customers have already decided. A retailer, a YouTube reviewer, or an AI chatbot will already have shaped their choice. Your rebate becomes a pleasant surprise at closing, when it could have been the reason they made the switch.
Your Q4 readiness checklist
Package and fund
- Bundle your residential and commercial EV offerings behind one front door.
- Confirm your rebate budgets will last through the spring peak. Running out of money in March is the worst possible outcome.
Prepare the proof and the message
- Use the full cost-of-ownership model internally, for budget approval and program design.
- Set one bold, true, bottom-line savings claim for customers, built on your actual rates.
- Keep a simple estimator available as an optional deeper layer, outside your campaign creative.
Get your partners ready
- Brief installers, fleet partners, local automotive influencers, and new-car dealers before January.
- Co-promote with major used-car retailers such as CarMax, Carvana, Autotrader, CarGurus, AutoNation, and Cars.com. This is where the off-lease wave will be sold, and where your used EV rebate needs to be visible. Tesla models make up nearly 30% of used EV sales, so include Tesla’s used inventory channels too.
- Partner with local automotive YouTubers and creators. They’ve become one of the most trusted research sources for your customers before they buy. A 90-second segment on “the utility rebate most used EV buyers don’t know about” will reach more of the right customers than a bill insert.
Fix your digital front door
- Rebuild your EV program pages to be current, clear about which regions they cover, and readable by machines.
- Check what ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude say about your EV programs today.
Measure
- Track enrollments, rate adoption, charger installs, and fleet assessments weekly from January 1.
The bottom line
Let’s be clear about what’s at stake.
For your customers, your January EV programs mean $1,400 to $1,700 a year back in their pockets at $5 gas. They mean protection from the next fuel shock, and the one after that. That is affordability in its most direct form.
For you, they mean:
- Trust earned during an affordability crisis, when your customers are looking for someone on their side.
- New electric load you can shift to off-peak hours.
- Programs that finally hit their enrollment targets.
- A strong affordability story to bring to your regulators, your board, and your community.
For your community, they mean money that used to leave town through the gas pump stays local, flowing to local installers, local businesses, and your grid.
So let me say it twice, because it matters that much.
If you promote your EV-related programs in January, residential and commercial, you will deliver real affordability to your customers during the biggest EV opportunity this country has seen. Vehicles, used EVs, home charging, fast charging, fleets, and rates, packaged together and made simple.
If you wait, your customers will pay more at the pump while your best affordability programs sit unused.
The oil market will decide how big this moment gets. You decide whether your customers can find the answer.
Start in January.
IDLab helps utilities design, package, and launch programs their customers can actually find and act on. Our sister company, Incenva, ensures findability and easier program management. If you want help being ready for January, let’s talk.
