If only electric vehicles would shoot sparks — in the marketplace, that is.

Despite the billions of dollars invested by private corporations, and government subsidies, Americans are still indifferent as a whole over electric vehicles.

Just two in every 10 Americans say they are “very likely” to buy an EV as their next car, according to a recent survey by the University of Chicago’s Energy Policy Institute and the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

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The U.S. is an outlier on the issue

Two-thirds of Europeans said their next car would likely be an EV, a recent EIB climate survey shows. Meanwhile, EVs already account for 86% of new car sales in Norway and 72% in Iceland, according to statistics cited by Canary Media.

Even Chinese consumers are more enthusiastic about this transition than their American counterparts, those numbers show; 16% of all cars sold in China in 2021 were electric, whereas the figure in the U.S. is just 5%, ranking it number 19 out of the 20 countries charted.

The Biden Administration can’t be happy with those findings.

The transition to clean energy is a key part of the government’s agenda and subsidies in the recently-passed Inflation Reduction Act were supposed to make EVs more appealing. The legislation earmarked up to $7,500 in tax credits for each American motorist who ditched their gas guzzler. The administration’s strict new pollution limits are intended to push EV sales to 67% of the market by 2032.

Unfortunately, the carrot-and-stick approach hasn’t worked. To drive EV adoption higher, the government and auto industry need to resolve two key hurdles for ordinary consumers: cost and infrastructure.