Here are two true statements about electric vehicles in the United States: First, according to Kelley Blue Book, nearly 600,000 were sold in the first half of this year, up 7% from the first half of 2023. Second, that growth rate is significantly lower than it was a few years ago.

The growth of the EV market is not meeting the expectations some automakers had in 2022.

So why did some automakers expect Americans to switch to electric cars so quickly? And why did sales fall short of those predictions?

To answer that question, it’s worth looking back to the 2022 Super Bowl, the moment when electric vehicle hype really hit the cultural mainstream. That year, electric vehicle ads dominated the broadcast.

There was Salma Hayek and Arnold Schwarzenegger as Greek gods driving around Palm Springs, California, in an electric BMW. The kids from The Sopranos met next to an electric Chevy Silverado. Mike Myers reprised his role as Dr. Evil (Dr. EV-il, get it?) from Austin Powers. Films that supposedly are about taking over GM and converting its vehicle range to electric drive.

“I will first help save the world and then take over the world,” he said, putting his little finger to his lips.

To the more than 100 million television viewers watching the Super Bowl, the auto industry seemed to be saying: electric cars are here, they’re cool, and you should buy one. However, electric cars only made up a small portion of new car sales last year – about 3%. But even that small share signaled strong growth, up nearly two-thirds from 2020. That was thanks in large part to one company: Tesla.

“They’ve basically made it clear that this is now economically feasible,” said Tom Narayan, an auto industry analyst at RBC Capital Markets.

Tesla, which makes only electric vehicles, made a profit for the first time in 2020, and that profit margin soared in 2021. Other automakers have had to catch up.

At the same time, car buyers had pandemic relief funds in hand and could receive government tax credits for electric vehicles. All of this made the EV market look rosy to both companies and analysts.

“When you look at the numbers and they’re stronger than expected, you can’t help but extrapolate that into the future, right?” Narayan said. “Because there’s no data to suggest otherwise.”

So, many automakers, anticipating that consumer demand would continue to rise and feeling pressure from regulators, went all-in on electric cars and invested billions of dollars in capital expenditure.

Stephanie Brinley, associate director at S&P Global Mobility, said automakers are thinking, “Okay, at some point we’re probably going to have an electric vehicle-dominated market, if not a pure electric car market. If we want to be part of that market, we need to invest.”

Those investments led companies to run those Super Bowl ads and set ambitious goals for electric vehicle production, assuming consumers would come to buy. “The expectations of how quickly electric vehicle adoption would happen were a little high,” Brinley said.

Electric vehicle sales continued to rise through 2023, but the steep upward trend seen in early 2022 began to moderate, partly due to changing economic conditions.

Interest rates have risen, “making it more difficult to finance anything, including more expensive cars,” said Karl Brauer, senior analyst at iseecars.com.

In addition, the economy is characterized by inflation, “which makes it difficult for people to buy a new or expensive car when they want to buy milk and bread at the same time,” said Brauer.

And after trying electric vehicles, some consumers just weren’t that happy with them, Brauer says. Scott Lambert has seen this in Minnesota, where he is chairman of the state’s auto dealers association. He said electric vehicles haven’t met two important needs for some drivers in his state: driving in the cold and towing loads.

“If you have an electric truck and you want to pull your ice house out onto the lake on a cold February day, you better plan your day very carefully,” he said. “Because you lose a lot of range pulling the ice house, and you lose a lot of range in cold weather.”

But Lambert believes that in the long term, these problems can be solved as electric vehicle technology advances, allowing electric cars to meet the needs of more drivers.

“I really think it’s important to recognize that the transition to electric vehicles was always going to be about a 10 to 15 to 20 to 30 year period,” said Brinley of S&P Global Mobility.

Despite the recent slowdown, the automotive industry still believes that electric vehicles are the future, but they are aware that the transition is a marathon, not a sprint.