In a TikTok video posted earlier this week, a Chihuahua claps its paws and dances to disco in front of a Tesla. “EV owners seeing gas prices go up, and not having to pay it,” the caption reads. In another, a clip of the comedian Zach Galifianakis laughing hysterically is superimposed over a gas-price sign. Across social media, Americans who drive electric vehicles can’t help but gloat. Who’s laughing now?

Indeed, a car that doesn’t require gas sure does sound appealing right now. As the Iran crisis continues to choke the global supply of oil, gas prices are rising higher and higher. Americans are now paying an average of $3.63 a gallon at the pump, according to AAA—up from $2.94 just a month ago. Four bucks may be right around the corner, and elevated prices could linger for months. Already, ride-share drivers are getting pickier about the trips they accept and driving longer hours to offset the extra costs. Commuters are hunting for the best deals on services such as GasBuddy—which has seen its daily active users more than double in a week and a half. At one Chevron in downtown Los Angeles, people are stopping just to take photos of the electronic sign displaying a price of $8.38 per gallon.

America could have entered this fiasco with a better hand. The current spike in gas prices—and whatever comes next—could have been much more manageable if more people had electric vehicles in their driveway. Yet relatively few Americans are currently in the position to recharge instead of refuel (regardless of whether they’re rubbing it in with Chihuahua memes). In the United States, sales of electric vehicles have risen considerably over the years, but adoption lags behind the rest of the world. Just under 8 percent of new cars sold last year in the U.S. were electric, compared with a fifth in Europe and a third in China. Now America is quite literally paying the price for sticking with gas.

Some of the skepticism toward EVs is understandable: They generally cost more than conventional cars, plus there’s that unfamiliar business of charging. A road trip in an EV requires more planning than simply stopping at the nearest gas station when the low-fuel light starts blinking. On top of that, low gas prices have made it easy for less climate-conscious buyers to adopt an attitude of why bother?

As much as Americans love giant SUVs and V8-engine-powered pickup trucks, ballooning gas prices have historically pushed car buyers to seek out more efficient options. In 2008, when prices hit $3.50 a gallon, tiny fuel savers such as the Honda Fit and Smart ForTwo had a moment. In 2012, when the national average closed in on four bucks, the Toyota Prius smashed sales records. The last time we had major sticker shock at the pump (after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022), the modern-EV market was only just starting to take off—with Ford, Hyundai, Kia, and others jumping in to compete with Tesla.

The bigger problem is that the Trump administration and the Republican-controlled Congress have spent the past year devising new and creative ways to keep the country hooked on internal combustion. As part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Congress killed the $7,500 EV tax credit, a carrot to encourage Americans to go green. (After the tax credit expired at the end of September, the all-electric share of car sales dropped by about half and has struggled to recover.) Regulations pushing car companies to sell cleaner vehicles, including more battery-powered ones, have also disappeared. Freed from regulations, and facing a milder appetite for EVs, automakers have seized the opportunity to backtrack. Many are canceling or delaying EV models while doubling down on gas-guzzlers. This week, Honda was the latest to join the trend, announcing that it would axe three upcoming EVs before production had even begun.

It’s not hard to imagine how different things could be right now without all the policy whiplash. Perhaps many more Americans would not have to anxiously check gas prices whenever they pass a Shell or BP. The math is undeniable: If you charge at home, driving a typical electric car 100 miles costs about $5, based on the latest available residential-electricity rates from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. (Plugging in at public chargers is a lot more expensive.) To match that in a fully gas-powered car at today’s gas prices, you would need to find one that gets 70 miles to the gallon. They don’t exist.

If the high prices stick around or climb even higher, that could certainly nudge more car buyers toward going electric. The car-buying site Edmunds says that it’s already seen a “slight uptick” in shoppers considering hybrids and EVs. “More shoppers could begin weighing fuel economy and electrification more seriously as they plan their next purchase,” Jessica Caldwell, the firm’s head of insights, wrote this week. Even as the Trump administration hampers EVs and the auto industry shifts its focus, electric cars are becoming better gas replacements than ever before. Many new EVs now come with battery ranges that exceed 300 miles, and the charging infrastructure is finally catching up. With new options like the roughly $30,000 Nissan Leaf and a flood of lightly used EVs hitting dealerships, there are lots of deals to be found. A host of new and impressive models are on track to land in 2026 (assuming they don’t all get prematurely yanked from the market, that is).

President Trump may not be a fan of electric cars, but the Iran fuel shock could become its own kind of stimulus for EVs. If things get really bad, car companies may even regret back-burnering the exact kind of vehicles that Americans start to crave. Will pain at the pump override everything Trump has done to derail EVs, and launch this technology into a golden age? Probably not. If fuel costs were the whole ball game, then EVs would already dominate, and giant pickups would be going extinct. Hesitancy around EVs runs deep, and not everyone can charge at home, where they can register the biggest savings.

But the higher prices go, and the longer they stay that way, the greater the chance that more Americans will do the math and decide that they are done paying for gas once and for all. If enough drivers go that route, the next oil crisis might just sting a little less.