Can’t Get Into a Restaurant? Blame the Reservation Apps.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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**Belle Lin** (0:35)
Welcome to Tech News Briefing. It's Tuesday, August 11th. I'm Belle Lin, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal Leadership Institute. For many people, once you go electric, you stay electric, but that may not be the case anymore. We are looking at the reasons why EV drivers aren't staying loyal to their battery-powered cars and the options they're now looking at instead. Then, if you've had trouble getting a reservation at a restaurant recently, you're not alone. What used to be just a New York or Los Angeles problem is now happening in cities across the country, and apps may be to blame. We dig into how tech is changing the way we eat out and why restaurants and diners are hungry for a different system.
But first, for Americans looking to lease a car, the electric vehicle honeymoon is over. A February study from JD Power showed that 96% of polled EV owners say they would consider purchasing or leasing another, but only if there are options. And nationally, second quarter new EV sales and leases were down 20.5% year over year, according to Kelley Blue Book.
WSJ's Ellie Davis spoke with several drivers who thought going electric would be a permanent switch, but are now finding themselves back at the gas pumps once again. She spoke with our colleague Imani Moise to explain why.

**Imani Moise** (2:05)
Why is leasing an EV getting more expensive?

**Ellie Davis** (2:08)
The EV tax credit is no longer around. This was a Biden-era policy measure and people who were buying a new EV could put $7,500 towards that purchase. They could also put that tax credit towards leasing a car and people could get these lease deals for in some cases around $100 a month, especially when dealers were anticipating the EV tax credit's expiration and they wanted to get those cars off their lots as fast as possible while the deal was still around.

**Imani Moise** (2:43)
Just how dramatically have lease payments changed over the past couple of years?

**Ellie Davis** (2:47)
On average, we've seen an increase in lease prices. Average monthly lease payments for EVs hit a low in July 2025 at $538 per month.
In June, that same price had risen to $707 per month, and compared to the average monthly payment for a gas car, it's about $100 more.

**Imani Moise** (3:08)
Is it really just the prices that are scaring people away? All else being equal, if the prices were the same, would the drivers that you spoke to want to get another EV?

**Ellie Davis** (3:18)
The drivers that I spoke to really got hooked on EVs when they took the plunge and tried them out for the first time when they had the justification that prices were really low.
The drivers that I spoke to were excited about getting another EV, and in some cases, they were shopping around in the market, really hoping to find another EV so that they could keep using chargers that they had put into their homes when they got their first EV. But some found that they were not seeing options that they were interested in because the options for EVs now are really few. There's not a lot of smaller EV options on the market within an affordable price range, so it's pushed some consumers out of the EV market.

**Imani Moise** (4:01)
Will prices become more affordable again, or were those deals too good to be true?

**Ellie Davis** (4:06)
The analysts that I spoke to in the industry really think that those prices were once in a lifetime. The consumers who acted when they did and they got an EV either through buying the car or getting a really good lease deal did the right thing. They got a great deal, but they're probably never going to see that type of deal again.

**Imani Moise** (4:26)
So when people decide not to lease another EV, what are they going with instead?

**Ellie Davis** (4:30)
We're seeing that people who are trading in an EV, whether that is a car that they've owned or leased, they're more and more switching to getting a hybrid as their replacement car. Back in quarter 2 of 2022, people who were turning in an EV, 3.4 percent of them chose to get a hybrid. Whereas in quarter 2 of 2026, 12.7 percent opted for a hybrid. Those are trade-ins excluding Tesla, Rivian and Lucid, which are companies that only sell EVs. This data is according to Edmunds.