SALES OF ELECTRIC VEHICLES ARE BOOMING with more than two-thirds of new car buyers now saying they will consider an electric vehicle for their next purchase.  

Even so, these high levels of interest still aren’t fully converting to sales when we look at vehicle registration data.  Dig a little bit deeper you discover that a significant proportion of sales are via tax-incentivised salary sacrifice arrangements that favour higher earners buying luxury vehicles.

This speaks of a retail market that’s failing to achieve its potential. 

The early stages of the car buying journey are about trying to make sense of lots of information, before narrowing down to a shortlist of options that can be considered in more detail. 

Start researching electric cars and you are soon presented with lots of new and unfamiliar data (range, charge times, chargers, infrastructure and tariffs) and it’s not hard to see why this could be a turn-off for new car buyers. 

How can we help buyers from research to consideration?

Initiatives like Arnold Clarks’ Innovation Centres are a great idea for customers who are willing and able to travel to one, but many buyers’ interest in an EV will begin (and potentially end) with a search for information.

Here you will find lots of articles aimed at the research stage, but fewer tools to help move buyers into the consideration phase of the new car journey.

If you’re a fleet with an abundance of telematics data on vehicle movements to draw down on there are businesses who can help with detailed analysis, but trying to replicate that with questionnaires for retail buyers suffers from complexity.

Questions too numerous or too difficult to answer lead to low engagement rates and produce inaccurate results.

So what’s the solution?

To help you bring some sense to the search for electric vehicles we’ve developed a suitability score based on just one question – what’s the longest journey you need to make?

It doesn’t aim to provide definitive answers, but gives a personalised suitability rating (0-100) for every electric vehicle that blends range, real-world factors and charging convenience to help buyers focus their attention on the right model and increase your chances of an enquiry or sale.  

EV Suitability is part of our Electric Vehicle API which is available for integration via the One Auto API platform.