What Car? reveals the first findings of its “2021 Electric White Paper”
What Car? has published the first findings from the “What Car? 2021 Electric Vehicle White Paper” – an in-depth study of 10,527 in-market buyers, made up of existing EV and hybrid owners, as well as petrol and diesel drivers.
The research found that 20% of in-market buyers are now considering a fully electric vehicle as their next car. This is a significant rise from 2019, when just 8% of respondents said they were considering an electric vehicle for their next purchase.
While buyer intent has more than doubled in the past two years, many of the concerns for new EV buyers remain, in particular, cost and stock availability, concerns over range and charging infrastructure have actually increased since 2019.
This year, 31% of respondents said they were worried about range, compared with 25% in 2019, while 18% said that charging was a concern, compared with 15% in the first study.
Another key finding from the study was that the more time potential buyers spent researching their vehicles, the more their concerns were reduced, highlighting the key role retailers can play by informing their customers during this transition. Concerns over cost fell from an initial base of 41% among buyers who had less than 10 days to research their vehicle, to 35% for buyers who spent more than three months researching, while buyers with concerns over charging fell from 18% to 16% when their research period was extended by the same amount.