Top EV Benefits, EV Range Adequacy, Driving & Charging Frequency — New Report
Credit to Author: Zachary Shahan| Date: Sat, 21 Dec 2019 23:10:22 +0000
Published on December 21st, 2019 | by Zachary Shahan
December 21st, 2019 by Zachary Shahan
Below is a segment of our new report, Electric Car Drivers: Demands, Desires & Dreams (2019)*. In the charts used in the article, “EV Drivers” represent non-Tesla fully electric vehicle owners, “PHEV Drivers” represent plug-in hybrid owners, and “Tesla Drivers” represent Tesla owners (surprise, surprise). The data come from thousands of survey respondents in the USA, Canada, and the UK.
When asked for the top reasons the EV drivers got their cars, we got similar responses as in previous years. The largest portion of buyers in every group referenced the environmental benefits. As before, Tesla buyers in the various markets were more likely to select “fun & convenience” and “I love new tech” than other EV drivers.
“The smooth & quiet drive” was also a popular answer throughout. Among non-Tesla EV drivers, below environmental benefit were commonly “low maintenance” and “financial savings.” Rounding out a regular top 5, even for non-Tesla drivers, was typically the option “fun & convenience,” sometimes coming in at #3, sometimes #4, sometimes #5.
Good design/style was also a fairly common choice among Tesla drivers, which is no surprise given that many people come to Tesla simply because they “saw a beautiful car on the road” and then Googled the name.
For the first time in this multi-year study of EV drivers, we asked drivers if their EVs met all of their driving needs or if they had to use other forms of transport. Interestingly, the top population for saying that their vehicles met all of their demands were Tesla drivers, not plug-in hybrid drivers — though, the latter had high scores as well. More than 90% of Tesla drivers responded in that way, quite uniformly across the various regions, while plug-in hybrid drivers were often a bit above 80% and non-Tesla BEV drivers responded affirmatively in around 50% of cases.
Perhaps relevant to charging and driving range is how much the respondents actually drive their cars. The responses demonstrated the difference in car dependency in the US versus Europe. That difference broke out the most when looking at the driving habits of Tesla and PHEV drivers. 60–65% of Brits said they drove their EVs almost every day, whereas 83% of North Americans answered “almost every day” for how often they did so.
The vast majority of respondents in all groups indicated that they had home charging. They tend to charge every other day or every few days, though. Respondents also didn’t have much difficulty finding charging stations, and much thanks is surely due to PlugShare because it provides extensive, robust, easy-to-use maps and associated details about charging stations around the world. Overall, respondents found charging stations to be reliable and effective, but there’s also much room for improvement.
For more, check out the full report: Electric Car Drivers: Demands, Desires & Dreams (2019).
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Zachary Shahan is tryin’ to help society help itself one word at a time. He spends most of his time here on CleanTechnica as its director and chief editor. He’s also the CEO of Important Media. Zach is recognized globally as an electric vehicle, solar energy, and energy storage expert. He has presented about cleantech at conferences in India, the UAE, Ukraine, Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, the USA, Canada, and Curaçao. Zach has long-term investments in Tesla [TSLA] — after years of covering solar and EVs, he simply has a lot of faith in this company and feels like it is a good cleantech company to invest in. But he offers no investment advice and does not recommend investing in Tesla or any other company.