2011 – the year of the electric car that never was. It started so promisingly: Denmark offered tax exclusions for EVs, while governments in the UK, Spain and Sweden offered subsidies. Across the continent, brands spent heavily on marketing, promoting their green credentials as well as their vehicles. And then… nothing.
In the first half of last year – the last period for which figures are available – just 5,222 electric cars were sold in Europe. And in the UK, just over 1,000 EVs were sold by the year’s end – a tiny fraction of a parc of almost 30 million vehicles. As a consequence, all involved have begun to revisit sales forecasts and significantly downgrade EV production plans. So is the EV a write-off before it’s even charged up?
Worryingly for manufacturers, at present, it is the consumers with the least realistic expectations of EVs who said they’d be most likely to buy one.
We wanted to establish where it’s gone wrong and whether the situation is redeemable. Taking the UK as a test bed for EVs across the continent, we conducted an extensive piece of consumer research into motorists’ attitudes towards plug-in cars.
The factors preventing the average Briton from replacing the family car with an EV will come as little surprise – price, range of travel, scarcity of charging stations and so on. Interesting, however, was the significant lack of awareness and misguided understanding among consumers – many underestimate the cost, for example, placing it as equal to, or less than that of a petrol car, when in reality it’s quite the opposite. Many also misjudge the charging time and the range of travel on a single charge.
Worryingly for manufacturers, at present, it is the consumers with the least realistic expectations of EVs who said they’d be most likely to buy one.
Our key conclusion from this research is that the mass market approach taken by the government and manufacturers to date simply isn’t going to work, nor is trying to instil the belief that an electric vehicle can completely take the place of a petrol car any time soon.
Affluent Greens account for 10% of all UK motorists. Targeting this group could lead to a quadrupling of EV sales in the short term.
So we set about segmenting the market to establish who exactly is going to adopt the electric car. We discovered the people realistically most likely to buy EVs are so-called ‘Affluent Greens’: people who presently drive luxury car brands such as Audi. Affluent Greens are not only aware of green issues and conscientious about ‘doing their bit’, but they also have the money which makes an EV a viable option. This group undertakes the kind of short, regular journeys – such as school runs or a moderate commute – for which plug-in cars are ideal. They don’t see the EV as a replacement for their Audi by any means; it is simply a different transport option – in the same way that sometimes they may choose to hop on their bicycle.
This is no niche group either – Affluent Greens account for 10% of all UK motorists. We’d estimate that targeting this group could lead to a quadrupling of EV sales in the short term. Furthermore, if the price of these vehicles gets closer to £15,000 (US$23,560), as many as 15,000 new EVs could realistically be expected to be sold to this segment every year. This is roughly 15 times the total number of EVs sold last year in the UK, and more good news: the percentages are likely to be fairly consistent across Europe as well.
Now is certainly not the time to decommission, un-plug and write off the electric car. Instead we just need to reset the satnav and drive forwards.
The opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Automotive World Ltd.
Francisco Lopez is managing director of GfK Automotive. For more information, visit: http://www.gfknop.com/sectors/automotive/index.en.html
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