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.