Two years ago, we asked our friends over at MyOffers to talk to their audience about the cars they drive and the cars they want to drive with some fascinating results.
Before I start, I should share a couple of facts…
- The MyOffers audience loves a car more than most. MyOffers members are already 26% more likely to have a car than the typical UK adult.
- It is twice as likely that car will be an EV.
Back in Jan 21, just under 3.5% of MyOffers members had an electric car, but a whopping 23.9% of them said their next car would be electric.
And this enthusiasm for EVs doesn’t seem to have diminished at all. We asked MyOffers to put the same questions to their audience again this January and the results on the face of it are not altogether unexpected. Of those people who are considering replacing their car, the percentage considering EVs has risen by 20%.
At a time when petrol and especially diesel prices are still sky high, nobody is surprised that people are considering the switch to electric more than ever.
But this massive increase is not the full story. EV demand is not spread evenly across the country. Urban MyOffers members are more likely to consider EVs with rural areas being dominated by petrol and diesel. This suggests range anxiety is still a thing. And perhaps with good reason.
Nearly 30% of MyOffers EV drivers say their next car will not be electric. This despite new petrol and diesel cars being discontinued within 12 years in the UK. Perhaps their experience of an EV lags behind the incredible pace of change in technology in this space?
Moreover, people planning to buy a new electric car are 28% less likely to do it in the next six months than petrol or diesel buyers. What are they waiting for? Are they waiting to be persuaded that technology in EVs and battery life has improved sufficiently to bring the EV ownership experience into line with that of a petrol or diesel car? Is this about ‘range anxiety’ or ‘change anxiety’?
Either way, this represents a fabulous opportunity for marketers in this space. Marketing people love to tell a story and here we have proof that there are people who want to listen. They want an EV and they want someone to show them a way past their range or their change anxiety.
What’s absolutely certain is that the demand for EVs isn’t going away any time soon and we need our country’s fantastic marketing community to help accelerate the switch-over.
P.S. When I was a kid, if I ever wanted to know anything about anything I went to the largest repository of human knowledge I knew. Mum. Her stock response was “Look it up.”
She meant text books and encyclopaedias back then (ask your Mum to explain if you must). In this way she unwittingly prepared me well for an adult life with Google and ChatGPT. But sometimes, that’s not quite enough. If you want to know what people think, sometimes you just have to ask them. And if you ask enough people, you might learn something unexpected. So this is what I use MyOffers for now. And no one can stop me! Great, isn’t it?
