273 - The Female Perspective Episode

Hi, I'm Gary and this is your views using the podcast about renewables, electric vehicles

and things that are interesting to electric vehicle owners.

And on the show today, we will be looking at things to think about

if you're a woman buying an electric vehicle.

This season of the podcast is sponsored by Zatmap, the go-to app for EV drivers helping you find

and pay for public charging with confidence. Before we start, I wanted to give you a little

bit of an update on the end of season round table. The guests this season are going to be

a little bit special, even more so than usual. I will be speaking to the CEOs of three major

industry groups operating in the electric vehicle space. Firstly, I'll be welcoming Vicky Reed

from the ChargePoint operator group Charge UK. Next, I'll welcome Tanya Sinclair from the

Industry Body Electric Vehicles UK. And finally, I'll welcome Vicky Edmunds from the Consumer

Association EVA England. Vicky Edmunds and Vicky Reed have both been guests on this podcast before

and they'll be familiar to listeners. But these three ladies together represent the consumer,

the charging industry and the main bulk of the EV industry. So I think there'll be a

number of excellent discussions coming from that episode. Now, if there's a question you

would like me to ask, please feel free to email me at info.evmusings.com. Thank you very much.

Our main topic of discussion today is the female perspective of electric vehicles. Now,

we have touched on this topic before in a couple of episodes, but we've never really

dedicated a complete episode to the key difference between buying an EV as a woman

and buying an EV as a man and everything that is related to that aspect. Now, earlier

this season, I chatted with a multiple-time guest of the podcast, Kate Tyrell, for the EV101

episode. We discussed lots of topics where she gave the female perspective on EV ownership.

Now, I originally wanted to take a few minutes of that and include it in episode 267,

but we ended up having quite a wide-ranging and fascinating discussion covering a number

of topics. So I asked Kate if she'd be okay with me putting it out as a standalone episode

and she said yes. So I am Kate Tyrell. I'm the founder of ChargeSafe, long-time

electric vehicle driver and now head of marketing for 3TI Energy Hubs.

Fantastic. And a former multiple-time guest on the podcast. So welcome back.

Well, now we're talking about EVs, surprisingly. And I brought you one because I want to,

I kind of want the female perspective on this. So just as a broad exercise,

why is buying an EV as a woman different to buying one as a man?

Such a good question, Gary. In my personal experience, when I have gone to collect an

electric vehicle from a dealership, the salesperson has instantly looked to my husband,

speaking directly to my husband, who, you know, he knows a bit about EVs naturally because

he's married to me and I chew his ear about it all the time. But I am more of an EV expert

than he is. And it's just this almost glazed-over visual of, ah, lady, let men talk.

And I've kind of gone, yeah, no, this is my car. And it's, you know, it's a vehicle that's got my

name on it, not his name. So I think just from the offset, it's really off-putting because

you feel patronized and invisible, which leaves a bit of a bad taste in your mouth, really.

It does a little bit. And I'm curious as to whether this is something that is a

male-to-female thing or whether female dealers have the same propensity, shall we say?

I would like to think that the women at the dealership wouldn't do that, but you never know.

I've never physically seen a woman at a dealership, which I guess is a whole other issue in itself.

You know, it would be fantastic to be served by a woman and be able to ask, you know,

all the important questions, like, I mean, I'm not a mother, but I know I have friends

who've gone to dealerships to say, you know, can I fit the push chair in the back?

You know, how wide do the doors open? Because my kids just tend to have a habit of swinging the

door open as soon as the child lock comes off, sort of thing. And I think it's that female touch

that's really important in dealerships, though I will say even the delivery drivers of the

vehicles tend to be a little bit condescending. I literally took delivery over a brand new EV

just yesterday and the guy parked it like an absolute job's worth on my driveway. He drove it in

rather than reversing. It made it very difficult to get out. I'll tell you what I've got. I've got

the Ford Explorer, which, if you've seen it, is the size of a small boat. Getting it into my

tiny Cotswolds driveway, which is coming off of a single track road, which has a sign saying,

no HTVs down here, please. It was a little bit of a nightmare, but the guys parked it up.

He's got out. He's given me the keys and he's gone, oh, why did you go for the electric one?

And I just looked at him and I went, well, because I'm in the electric industry, it would be a bit

weird for me to turn up to EV events in a diesel vehicle. Why wouldn't you go for an

electric one? It's much more fun to drive. And he went, yeah, well, you know, it's a bit

faster, and I was just like, go away. Why even question my choices of vehicle? I just can't

see that conversation happening with a man. I think the word I'm looking for is a little bit

frightening amongst many other things that something like that happens. I was actually in a,

I was test driving a BMW the other day and the young lady in the vehicle with me worked for

the dealership. So, you know, me being me, I took the opportunity to ask a few questions.

And my first question was, of course, so what car are you driving?

I was going to say, I don't think that woman gets paid enough to do her questions from you, Gary.

Well, she didn't get many questions because the answer to the first question was,

well, yeah, I'm driving a petrol three series. Right. Okay.

And the next question was, well, how many dealers in the dealership drive

electric? And she said, two out of 10. So it's just one of those interesting things.

And what you did actually bring up when you talked about the actual delivery process, because

I kind of want your view on this as well. Now, you've had any number of electric vehicles

over the, you've kind of paralleled me in the number of cars being in or driven. But when

you took delivery of the first vehicle, what were you told about it? How were you educated

on the electric aspect of that? My first EV, I was very privileged, in fact, that the

CEO of our wonderful friends at MyEnergy took me out for a very short test drive before handing me

the keys. And the reason why he did this was because I said, you know, I've never driven

an automatic let alone an EV before. So I caught the train up to Grimsby that day very early on

a Saturday morning to go and collect the vehicle. And I met with Lee, who was like,

oh, hi, Kate, you know, this is your new EV. These are the keys. This is how

this works. And he gave me a very brief overview of battery regen and the different

settings that go on into it. And that was kind of it. And I don't know whether it's because Lee

was obviously very well-versed in driving an EV and just assumed that everybody, you know,

understood or what. But I then had quite a stressful experience charging on the way home.

I wasn't, I didn't even know about pulling out the extra plug on the plug socket. So I was

trying to charge basically using an AC when I needed DC. And the car was capable of DC.

And I thought, well, what on earth is going on here? So just little things like that would have

been very helpful. However, he wasn't a professional car salesman, you know? So I feel like it's a

little bit unfair to think that he should, he should know everything to tell a first-time

EV driver. But he did kind of make sure that I was feeling comfortable with the car, which

was lovely. The first one I had delivered by an actual business came from our old friends

at Elmo. So I don't know, I don't even know if there aren't any more, but it was a Tesla Model 3.

And the guy was, he was just really impressed with the car. He showed me the key. He showed me how

to use the card against the door. But apart from that, the technical knowledge just wasn't there.

So we spent an hour just preening and photographing the vehicle. And that was it. I've also had

vehicles from onto where the handover again, very lackluster, like just not,

not any technical information. And I think that this is a real issue across dealerships and the

delivery partners is have a basic level of understanding. Know the vehicle's capacity to

charge when we're, when we're sat at an ultra rapid DC charger. And we're thinking, well,

you know, it was advertised to me, it would be 20 minutes to get to 100%, but it's not happening.

And you are thinking it's something wrong with the charger. So you're on X or you're on Facebook or

LinkedIn and you're bashing the poor charge point network operator when actually it's the vehicle.

And that wasn't explained to you properly. You might have got a slightly separate model. You

might have a smart, slightly smaller battery. You might not have a heat pump, things like

all of these tiny little things make such huge differences. And nobody seems to

come from a place of experience, but we have made ourselves experts in this through,

you know, lots of hard graft and bad experiences. So I genuinely think there needs to be a more

formal training program for, for these professionals to make sure that the drivers are

leaving more informed with their vehicle.

100% agree. Let me pose a slightly awkward question because you have been in a position

where you as a founder have provided electric cars for people who are working for you.

Did you provide any education to them at that level or at that?

The ones who hadn't driven an EV before, yes, a lovely Ron was well-versed in what he was doing.

He needed no extra coaching or support. In fact, I think he was actually driving his own

vehicle. I want to say he might have been, I can't even remember it was that long ago,

but we had a couple of team members who hadn't driven an EV before. In fact, for one of them,

it was her very first vehicle. So, you know, just chucked her right in at the deep end.

I gave them a bit of a debrief in terms of these are the apps you want to download

in terms of locating charges, try not to rely on the in-vehicle tech.

It tends to have quite outdated data on the dashboard. So the likes of our friends at

Zapmap, you know, the go-to app for locating a charger across reference that with your long

journeys, you know, plug that into Waze, use Apple Airplay wherever you can because then

you can custom your journey. This is what DC charging is. This is what AC charging is.

You're going to likely pay between £25 and £50 for a pre-authorization fee,

and then the money is going to come off at the very end. Hopefully, you'll get it back

in time. If not, you know, give me a call. If you ever start, give me a call.

All of these little things, but there were times, you know, when I wouldn't have known

what to anticipate with some of the drivers and they would call and say, okay, you know,

I've seen this or I've got this situation happening. What can I do? And I would be like,

let me reach out to my network because I don't actually know the answer to that myself. So,

you know, we're all on a learning journey. Let's embrace that. But on the flip side,

if you are the one providing vehicles and you're at the dealership, you know,

you're representing the vehicle itself, you should know the basic technology information about,

you know, battery power of range, time to charge, how to tuck it in at night, you know.

How to tuck it in. Lovely. Right. Two sort of related questions, and I'm coming at this from

the dealer side and from your side. What sort of advice would you give to dealers

regarding the best way to sell electric vehicles to women? And the

colliery side to that is what sort of advice would you give to a woman

considering buying an electric vehicle? Okay. To the dealers, I would say,

give an ED to every single person in your workforce for a minimum of a week and let them

really experience it in real time. Send them off on at least one long journey and make sure

that they'll be returning late at night where they will need to find a charge point late at

night. Let them have these experiences so that they can come from place of empathy and

understanding when, you know, handling driver concerns and especially those of women drivers who,

you know, might be a little bit worried about where they're going to charge,

especially late at night. Are the charges going to be well lit? Am I going to feel safe?

Because that is a consideration that we will make. And I think by the dealerships

having that experience, hands-on experience, I want every single person, the receptionist,

to the sales director, the person who's bringing them round from the forecourt and handing over the

keys after a valet, like just everybody should have that experience. Because then it can be like,

oh yeah, you know, I drove that one last week. You might want to watch out for blah, blah, blah,

or, you know, I thought it was really great for this, this, this. It's tricky because

obviously they want to sell all of the vehicles. They are money motivated. They have

incentives in place to, to earn some extra cash. So I always find dealerships a little bit,

you've got to take them with a pinch of salt anyway, because of course they're going to say

that their vehicle was the biggest and best. So have a little feel around, go to several different

manufactured dealerships and really consider your options. And I guess that's what I would say

to female drivers is shop around. Don't go for the first one just because it looks extra sexy,

because it could be missing some really critical features like heat pump. You know, I,

I don't want to paint everyone with the, the same brush sort of thing, but my husband always feels

really hot. I always feel really cold. He will always have AC blaring, but there are ways to,

to do that without using too much battery power. But when you want to turn on the heat,

you have to kick in some extra power. And therefore I feel like, and this is very

generalized term, but I'd love to see data on this if we can get it. I feel like women must use

the heating options more in their vehicles. And therefore, by way of assumption, a very

generalized term, don't come for me with the legal teams. I feel like women would use more

power in their vehicles for that exact reason. If you're a woman and you're looking to buy

a car, check the, check where the, the power socket is. So, you know, is it at the front?

Is it at the back? Are you going to be reversing into charging bays? Is your back going to be to the

charger? Where are you going to be faced if you're having to sit with the vehicle for 20 plus minutes,

especially like I've had on so many occasions at one o'clock in the morning, charge scenario,

get the apps, get that map, find out where those charge points are, have a look at the

environment before you arrive. If you're in an area where you're unfamiliar, you've

travelled far away from home, just do that little bit of research so that you feel really

comfortable with the journey. Luckily, in 2025, you know, we're in a position where we've got

how many chargers on UK roads now? Like 80,000 plus?

Two and a bit, I think. Last time I looked, yeah.

It is easier. It's much more fun to drive. And as a, as a woman and, you know, previous

petrolhead, I can wholeheartedly say I just, I love driving electric and that's not because,

I'm in the industry, it's because I'm a bit of a adrenaline junkie and I love

beating the boy races off the line so much fun. Because it's, you know, I hate to segregate,

but it is a dozen them, isn't it? You know, they've got these vehicles, even the,

you know, listeners to the podcast will know I drove Porsche 911s for 10 years

and they're fantastic and really, really quick. But even when you put your foot down,

there's always the lag as you hit the, you know, as the revs build up and you

just don't have any of that with electric. It's full power from zero.

Yeah. Let me just loop back to, because there's a lot of great stuff that you've talked about there.

I just want to come back and, and talk about the dealer aspect of this and selling to women because

presumably if, if a woman goes in and wants to buy, well, you know, a Land Rover or a Range Rover,

the dealer is going to sell them that on a certain,

a certain context. They're going to look at it and they're going to go, well, you know,

you need to know about how comfortable it is to drive. You need to know about

how fast it will go, how safe it is and that sort of thing.

Are they doing the same thing with electric vehicles or are they concentrating on the

electric aspect to the detriment of things like, as you've said, it will fit

to child seats in the back. You can put dogs in the, in the rear.

What's your impression or your understanding from that point of view?

I really genuinely believe that if you're going into a dealership where both internal combustion

engine vehicles and electric vehicles are on offer, they will use the electric vehicle

counterpart to put forth an argument as to why they should take a diesel or petrol vehicle

for forecourt. They will focus on things like the range. They will talk about the lack of

charging infrastructure. They will talk about everything but that actual vehicle,

except for the range and that's it. They're not talking about the vehicle.

They're not saying, oh, you know, this is highly luxurious. Look at this fancy technology that's

built into this car. Look at this fantastic, huge screen. You know, the fact that there's a,

there's a massager in the seat. You know, there's a massager in the seat of my new EV

and I cannot believe nobody told me about that until I was literally sat in it having

a play with the buttons. Like, what a great selling point. I drive all the time,

break to have a massage while stuck driving. You know, it's really silly things and I feel

like we're still in a place where, especially with the dealerships that have multiple fuel

types on offer, they want to sell what they've got in their stock, right? Because what they

sell that's on the forecourt is something that's going to make them money there and then.

They are, you know, being motivated by their own personal reward. And I have a real big

problem with that. I feel like maybe even dealerships should segregate that and have like,

you know, Ford electric dealerships and for, you know, like bring in this futuristic showroom

that really demonstrates and have those staff members really highly trained in everything to

do with electric, everything to do with the myth busting. Because when those questions do come,

it's good to know that you've got the answers. But also, you know, just have,

have the answers readily available for things that they would have talked about in a diesel

and petrol counterpart, like how luxurious it is and how spacious it is and how much your dog is

going to love it. And the fact that you've got these pull down handles, I was in a car recently

that didn't have a pull down handle. And I was like, okay, well, what do I attach the dogs

seat protector to, you know, these, these little things, they're just little things,

but they are important. And they do build up to an overall more holistic user experience.

There is a bigger issue which is the marketing of the concept of electric vehicles overall. And

I've got an episode where we talk about, you know, why is it that an advert for an electric vehicle,

it's pretty much the same, you know, it'll show the car going around some magically empty roads,

there'll be some reference to an electrified future, there'll be somebody saying, you know,

it'll do you up to 350 miles of range. And then at the end, there'll be a picture of somebody

actually plugging the car in, which is nothing to do, you know, that's, there's no relationship to

the real life experience of owning and running an electric vehicle. They're not talking about,

you know, being able to preheat the car, for example, you know, things like that.

There's a whole different topic to be discussed on exactly how, what is the better way of marketing

the electric vehicle experience. And once, once that sort of pervades the public consciousness,

I think you're going to get more people going and asking the more relevant questions. And I

think that will start to, to force a lot of the dealers to have to up their game.

Do you know what though, Gary, I think that's such an excellent point. And to see an advert

for me, I feel like Jill now does this so beautifully, she always posts about it in the

autumn winter months, how smug she's feeling, watching her car preheat from like her kitchen

while she's drinking a nice hot cup of coffee, the car's still plugged in. So she's leaving

on 100% charge. And I just think that is a fantastic advertisement. And also a really

great selling point, you know, in the winter, when it's still pitch black dark outside at

like half seven in the morning, if I'm driving into London, I would need to leave at like six,

six 30, which is not very fun in the winter. But also, I can preheat my car, which means I'm not

going to be stood there with a silly old store card or credit card scraping ice off my windscreen.

It's going to have melted away already. My steering wheel was heated. So my hands are

going to be nice and warm. I can put my heated seat on. And the climate is already

managed before I even get into the vehicle. So there's less time wasted doing things like that.

And how valuable is our time? I mean, even as a marketing concept, it is extremely valuable.

You can plug in when you get home, if you're able to do so fantastic, absolutely do it. Plug in

when you get to work, plug in when you stop at a service station, when you're, you know,

you're grabbing a coffee and going to the loot, plug in wherever you can, but live a much easier

life as a result. Yeah, totally agree. Any final message for listeners about

the whole concept or the whole process of buying and buying, leasing, getting an electric vehicle

as a woman? Yes. Okay. So I would say absolutely do your own research. For me, I do like to look at

car reviews online. Haven't seen too many women reviewing cars. So that might be

an area of opportunity for someone who really enjoys being on camera and driving electric vehicles.

We see that on electrify.com, Ginny Buckley and her colleague, which are an excellent work,

but like you said, there's not that many of them. No, no. And it would be, I always

forget about electrify.com. I just don't, I feel like they need to be a lot more vocal

because what a fantastic resource. Ginny, you know, doing reviews on electric vehicles,

I'd love to see more of that, but it just doesn't come into my algorithm, I guess. And I don't know

why, which is strange because yet that does exist. But I feel like even if we've got a community of

the female drivers out there to film and I'm just having a look around this car,

I'm test driving it for the weekend, you know, this is, it's got this, this and this feature,

that would be fantastic. But anyway, regardless, that's a whole new idea.

If you're a woman looking to buy a new vehicle, do some research, watch some reviews.

Absolutely. Ginny Buckley with her electrify.com content, fantastic. Check out AutoTrader, you know,

Erin over there is doing a ton more on electric vehicles and just,

she's got some really interesting insights on that too. Have a look at the reviews,

shop around, go to several dealerships, take a man in because he's probably going to

be addressed first, which is really frustrating. But know the questions that you want to ask,

you know, things like, how much does the battery deplete in the winter months?

Does it have a heat pump? Are we going to have to pay extra to have a heat pump because it doesn't

come as standard? Because apparently now that's a thing. Things like Apple CarPlay,

if you're using an iPhone or just the inner car tech, the navigational system,

does it plot out electric vehicle charging stations for you? Or are you going to

be using something like Zatmat in your vehicle? Yeah, just do your research and

join Women Drive Electric, the community on Facebook, because they are incredible. I absolutely

adore them. And they're so welcoming and non-judgemental of any new female EV driver.

They can go, you can come in, you can ask the silliest sounding question,

and you will just be met with lots of warmth, love, respect and very professional replies,

which is really cool. I will put a link to Women Drive Electric in the show notes for

anybody who's wanting to join that. Yeah, George and Michelle and the group there doing a fantastic,

fantastic work. Wonderful. Kate, I appreciate your time. Thank you very much.

Thanks very much, Gary.

So there are a couple of takeaways from this discussion with Kate. There is a level of,

what we almost call it, rampant sexism across the EV sales space. From the dealers assuming

that a couple coming in to buy a car must be driven by the man in the relationship,

rather than the woman, to the fact that having hands on experiencing dealerships for women especially

will improve sales staff empathy overall. Women want to be sold cars on different things. For a

woman, generally, the car needs to be a safe space with room to deal with kids, etc. I remember

chatting quite a while back with podcast co-founder Simon who used to drive the BMW i3. Now he

told me that the design of those cars with the so-called suicide doors meant that access to the

rear seats to get a young child in and out was relatively easy, but it also meant that if you

were parked next to another vehicle, you could easily find yourself stuck in that triangle of no

escape formed when the two doors were open and up close to the adjacent car and you had a

youngster in a pram or a pusher and nowhere to actually move them to allow you to close

one of the doors and escape. Now I wonder how many of the dealers have actually ever experienced that,

just something to think about. So any thoughts on this episode? Let me know info at evmousings.com

It's time for a cool EV or renewable thing to share with your listeners.

Porsche, oh my good friends at Porsche, are going to offer wireless inductive charging as an option

on the all-new electric Porsche Cayenne. An 11 kilowatt on-box floor plate charges the car

when parked over it. The Cayenne auto lowers, it has safety sensors and the MyPorsche app controls

all the process. The system debuts in Europe in 2026 and is one step closer to making charging

as seamless as possible. Now we've covered wireless charging several times on the show,

most recently on episode 190, the induction charging episode. I like attempts such as this

to make charging easier, so well done Porsche. The EVmousings podcast is sponsored by Zatmap,

the go-to app for EV drivers helping you find and pay for public charging with confidence.

See what charge points are available right now with live availability

and unrivaled UK charge point coverage at your fingertips. Pay it thousands of charge points

within the app or with the Zatmap charging card. Join over a million EV drivers,

download Zatmap and charge with confidence. Now I hope you enjoyed listening to today's show.

It was made possible with the help of Kate Tyrell. Thank you very much for your time,

Kate. If you have any thoughts, comments, criticisms or other general messages to pass

on to me, I can be reached at info at evmousings.com. On the socials I'm on Blue Sky at evmousings.bsky.social.

I'm also on Instagram at evmousings where I post those little short videos in the odd podcast

extract regularly. Why not follow me there? Many thanks to everyone who supports me through

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Now, if you enjoyed this episode, why not buy me a coffee? Go to coffee.com slash evmousings

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Regular listeners will know about my two ebooks, so you've gone electric and so you've gone renewable.

Now they're 99PH or equivalent and you can get them on the Kendall store on Amazon.

Check out the links in the show notes for more information as well as a link to my

regular evmousings newsletter and associated articles. Now I've spoken to a few of you and

I know that you're probably driving, walking, jogging, ironing or sat on the sofa watching

this on your phone, but if you can remember and you enjoyed the episode, drop a review in

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very much. Now if you've reached this part of the podcast and are still listening, thank you.

Why not let me know you've got to this point by message me at musingsv.beastkind.social with

the words smashing the glass sunroof, hashtag if you know you know, nothing else. Thanks as always

to my co-founder Simon, you know, we told this week about whether his theory that Bigfoot

hasn't been captured because he drives an electric unicycle that gives him a speed advantage.

I told him I'm not so sure that's accurate. Maybe it's a one wheel instead. And he told

me. Okay, so I would say absolutely do your own research. Bye.

Ford Explorer

Tesla Model 3

Tesla Model

Porsche 911

Land Rover Range Rover

BMW i3

Porsche Cayenne

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