Photo by Melissa Hincha-Ownby
EV car registrations are still very low, why?
91 votes: Is the Automotive Professional tired because of the warm? A topic that has been already dealt with … or is it uninteresting? Who knows!
But the fact remains that the votes, deliberately collected among a large set of selections in order to have opinions and ideas from different points of view, finally can be categorized only in 3 thematic areas.
The survey data
- Total number of all respondents: 91
- Sample: Automotive Space followers
- Survey period: from July 2nd to July 20th 2015
First conclusion:
The car is and must remain a vehicle able to give us a significant autonomy, be at our service, remain a solution and not become a problem.
It seems that the main arguments in the 47.3% of the votes are: Autonomy, the distribution of the charging points and the charging times.
This is to say, if you have to make a fuss and “battle plans”, if you are not free to “turn the key” and depart, eventually stopping at the first charging point to work the way which remains, the equation won’t add up.
- It is crucial points, prerequisites without one cannot speak about real car:
- A toy?
- An object to show off?
- A trendy vehicle thanks to its (alleged) environmental content?
That makes sense, but it isn’t a car anymore, it is something else.
(note Click on image to enlarge)
Second consideration
What is the perception of the functional, economic and emotional/symbolic value related to a car?
In about the 26.4% of cases it is the price the element determining the failure.Doubtless it is considered in absolute terms but, of course, also in relation to the service and the image you have of the product (the proposal, vehicle, practical and service content, etc).
An economic supporting motivation seems to be the missing factor, or maybe even a rational legitimacy which sustains the EV.
There are a lot of “traditional” cars with a high price (maybe also too high) but are cherished and achieve resounding success. And so, why?
Find the reasons among the points listed in the first conclusion.
Photo by exfordy
Third consideration
The resistance to change: there is always been and it will always be, is a matter of assimilation of the change in itself.
In 13.2% of cases it is judged that the market is not ready yet, it hasn’t metabolized yet, understood, calculated.
But how it is possible to break up the resistance to change? I sadly remember the resistances which slowed the growth of diesel engines many years ago:
- Slow, too slow (= no performance)
- large, too large (= high size for that time)
- very, very durable, but devoid of attractive, passionate and emotional attributes
- only suitable for great travellers and professional users (= only functional)
At least in that case the resistances have been forced by dint of research and technical-technological evolution (from turbo to Common Rail).
And regarding EV, an issue relatively recent, the attempts to breaking up the status quo are imperceptible, not even weak.
The rest of the answers (13.1%) is distributed with low percentage between low performances and poor choice (11.0%) and lack of communication (about 2%).
In the final analysis
Perhaps today the EV lives in a limbo scarcely sustainable, in a perceptive and structural context that doesn’t confer it a dignity of “real car”, intended as current and metabolized concept .
Certainly attractive and culturally supporter of potentially interesting values (green, running costs), it isn’t able to shake off the tout court image and the role of entertainment vehicle because of its endogenous problems (i.e. autonomy, high prices) and external ones (charging point and charging times).
Translated by Federica Izzo
