Darren Slind
To boost EV adoption, dealership teams need to own and operate them too
In October 2022, I shared my initial impressions of the transition to owning a battery electric vehicle.
With 24 months of ownership and over 42,000 kms travelled, it now seems a good time to reflect on my experience and share the good, the not so good, and the implications for retailers and OEMs. The EV is my primary ride.
The list of things that met or exceeded my expectations include:
The vehicle: Performance, fun to drive, comfortable and quiet cabin. When I ride in an ICE vehicle now, I’m struck at how unrefined the experience is in comparison. And though I have a dual-motor AWD configuration (great for winter driving), most of the time I’m being propelled by the rear wheels. It’s not exactly sports car handling, but better than I expected. Interior space, leg room especially, is incredible.
Reliability: Touch wood, no quality issues to speak of, only a couple of software upgrades required. These updates were performed by my technician. Would an over-the-air (OTA) update have been better? Certainly. OTA updates are now standard in the latest model year.
Service experience: I still visit my dealer’s service department twice a year for the seasonal tire exchange and to have the battery and brakes inspected. The dealer is located close to my office and is convenient and efficient. I just wish they would stop asking if I need a lube, oil and filter service completed during the visit. Uh, no thanks.
Cost of ownership: Exceeds my expectation. I am spending two-thirds less to “fuel” my EV than I did for regular unleaded gas for my comparably sized ICE vehicle with the same annual mileage. My monthly electric bill averages $80 (combination home and public charging). I am also saving on LOF service, no longer required, but I expect to give back all of this LOF savings when I replace tires a year or two sooner than before (thank you heavy battery and, on occasion, overly enthusiastic green light departures). My EV insurance premium is also a bit higher. Overall, I’m way ahead when it comes to operating costs.
Charging: My “gas station” is in my garage. Over 90 per cent of my kilometres driven have come from electrons from my L2 home charger. Couldn’t be easier or more convenient. We also have a L2 charger at the office, but I’ve never needed to use it.
Battery: No discernable battery degradation so far, which I attribute to my (neurotic) charging habits. I almost never charge above 80 per cent and I adjust the amperage of my home charger — easy to do with the app — to charge more slowly than the 48A maximum (as low as 18A when I have all night). Slower charging puts less strain on the battery. While I have used DC fast chargers, this is rare, for reasons I will come to shortly.
Aspects of my EV experience that surprised me (and probably shouldn’t have if I had done more research or my sales consultant had advised me):
Range: Despite a stated range over 400 kms, I am still reluctant to take my EV on a road trip beyond a 250 km radius of my home. I stressfully discovered that temperature has a significant impact on range — both cold and hot — as do speeds over 110 kph. While some progress has been made over the last two years in public charging installations along the Windsor-Québec City corridor, it is not enough. I just don’t want the hassle. Access to the Tesla charging network in 2025 with a NACS adapter may help to change my mind.
Residual value: In retrospect, I wish I had leased my EV. At the time, the finance rate was several points lower than the lease rate. Now I may be trapped in the vehicle for some time given EV residual values have fallen faster than ICE vehicles. With batteries and software improving so rapidly, it makes more sense to lease an EV to take advantage of the newest tech every few years.
In summary, knowing what I now know, would I make the same decision? All day long. I seriously doubt I will ever go back to ICE, unless someone gifted me a 911. Electric vehicles, despite being in the early stages of their development, offer a superior driving experience to most ICE options, not to mention their green benefits.
Lessons Learned
With the benefit of living with an EV as my daily driver for the last 730 days, I offer the following (admittedly unsolicited) advice to retailers and their OEM partners:
Your sales and service teams also need to live with an EV to effectively engage with your prospective customers and owners.
While EV training is a must, a 1 or 2-day ride-and-drive at vehicle launch is insufficient for your sales consultants and service advisors to fully appreciate the customer’s EV reality.
OEMs should insist their corporate and field staff drive an EV as their company demo. Dealers should do the same. For team members without a company car, make EVs available for extended periods so they come to appreciate the EV lifestyle.
If we’re selling EVs without fully understanding their amazing benefits (and their limitations), we cannot properly serve the best interests of our customers. An EV is not simply a vehicle with a different powertrain. EVs represent a different form of mobility, come with a different ecosystem than ICE vehicles, and require education and some behaviour modification in the way we get from point A to B.
Solid state batteries and a more robust charging infrastructure may change this reality eventually, but right now most customers need practical advice to decide whether an EV fits into their daily life.
We’ve progressed beyond the Early Adopters to Early Majority buyers. These customers need a more facilitated (from the French verb facile = to make easy) experience, including assistance with home charging set-up, charging best practices, charging and vehicle apps, and cost of ownership considerations.
Offer your customers the full range of electrified options depending on their needs
With moderation in the BEV growth rate this year, OEMs are racing to bring a broader range of electrified vehicles to Canadian consumers: HEVs, PHEVs, BEVs and EREVs. I am particularly excited about this last option: Extended Range Electric Vehicles use a larger battery than a PHEV to achieve electric-only range of 200+ kms and a much smaller combustion engine to act as the generator to feed the battery. Yes, EREVs burn carbon but in significantly lower amounts with less CO2 emissions than ICE and with combined range exceeding 700 kms. EREVs have all the smoothness and refinement of BEVs because only the electric motor propels the vehicle.
As new electrified options reach your showrooms in the coming months, your sales teams need to help customers match the right vehicle to their specific use case. Sales consultants who invest (even a few minutes) in a proper needs assessment will enjoy higher closing ratios and happier customers than consultants who skip this critical step.
The idea of understanding the customer’s use case, a term typically used in the software business, must become a foundational step in our sales process again if we are to maximize the sales opportunities that electrified vehicles represent.
