EVs have a gender problem.
A new report from Escalent backs up an enduring trend: Men are adopting battery-electric vehicles (BEV) at a higher rate than women, with implications for both female consumers and the clean-energy transition.
Escalent’s data indicates that men make up a whopping 71% of BEV owners and 74% of shoppers. It also suggests that men are much more aware of the ins and outs of the technology, with some 55% reporting that they’re “very familiar” with the vehicles, in contrast to only 30% of women.
Nikki Stern, senior insights manager at Escalent, told Tech Brew that the differences between men and women are appearing at the very beginning of the car-buying process and trickling all the way through to purchase decisions.
“We’re seeing that women are starting off with much lower familiarity with the powertrain. They’re less likely to know someone who owns the powertrain than men,” she said. “And that just kind of filters through the purchase funnel, so they have lower opinion of BEVs, lower consideration, lower practicality of the powertrain, and then in the end lower intent to purchase the powertrain.”
Data insights: Escalent found men and women tend to go about researching EVs in different ways. Some 71% of men are likely to do their research online, relying heavily on sources like videos and online forums. Women, meanwhile, tend to prefer in-person research—but “report having worse dealership experiences than men.”
The report also states that women are “less adventurous” when it comes to new tech and prefer products with which they’re already familiar. Stern noted that women prefer to wait to purchase a product until they’ve gotten feedback on it from people they know. Men, meanwhile, like to buy new products and spread the word themselves.
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Barriers to adoption also differ by gender, she said. Men tend to be hung up on common concerns like uncertainty about the vehicle’s battery, while women’s concerns are broader.
Takeaways: These findings, according to the report’s authors, hold particular significance for car dealers, who may want to refine their strategies to better meet the needs of female consumers.
“Automakers and dealers really need to build a true omni-channel sales experience for customers. And when I say true omni-channel, that doesn’t mean that there’s a digital channel and there is an in-person channel at the dealership,” K.C. Boyce, VP in Escalent’s automotive and mobility and energy teams, told us. “It’s that those things talk to each other and allow people to seamlessly complete their shopping experience however they want to do it.”
This insight comes even as automakers and car dealers look to make the car-buying process more digital and tech-centric than ever.
“Having a true omni-channel shopping experience allows people, regardless of their gender, to shop in the way that works for them,” Boyce added.
The report comes during a tricky time in the electric transition, as many automakers pare back their electrification plans in response to slowing consumer demand. EV sales in the US continue to grow, and now make up approximately 9% of the new-vehicle market, according to Cox Automotive. But sales growth has slowed—and Boyce and Stern agreed that for adoption to accelerate, the industry needs to get women on board.
“We don’t see any evidence in our work that women are anti-EV,” Boyce said. “There’s a lot of things that are attractive to many women about EVs, but they also have a lot of questions about EVs, and we need to do a better job of answering them as an industry.”