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Hi, I'm Gary and this is Evie Musings, a podcast about renewables, electric vehicles and things
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that are interesting to electric vehicle owners.
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This season of the podcast is sponsored by ZAPMAP, the go-to app for EV drivers helping you
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find and pay for public charging with confidence.
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Our main topic of discussion today is nudges. Back in 2012, Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein,
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who are two respected behavioral economics professors, released a book called Nudge. The
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basic concept behind the book was that it's often much easier to affect people's behavior
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using simple methods rather than more complex methods. Two examples. If you want kids
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at school to choose healthier food options at lunch, rather than changing the menu and
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taking all the bad food off the menu, which is seen as mandating food and taking choice
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away, it's often easier just to rearrange things. If the French fries are prominently
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displayed instead of carrot sticks, guess what? Kids choose French fries. Put the
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desserts at the start of the line instead of the end and guess what? Kids choose
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more desserts. Common sense, really, isn't it?
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The other famous example from this book relates to workplace pensions. In many places in
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the US, pensions are opt-in. A person has to physically tick a box on a form to opt-in
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to a specific workplace scheme. Research has found that many people weren't doing this
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and were missing out. By changing the form to opt-out rather than opt-in, the rate
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of workplace pension enrollment rose dramatically. If you didn't do anything, you were automatically
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enrolled. If you didn't want to enroll, you could easily make the decision yourself.
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These things are known as nudges and there are thousands of examples in everyday life.
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Now I'll put an affiliate link to the book in the show notes in case anyone wants to get
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a copy for themselves. A well worth a read. But it did get me thinking. What sort of
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nudges can we put in place to help people make the switch to electric vehicles, solar
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panels, battery storage and heat pumps? And more to the point, how many of these
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nudges are behavioural, i.e. there's something individuals will react to psychologically and
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how many can be legislative, i.e. there's something in law that makes the choice inevitable.
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I recently read a post from someone talking about one of the manufacturers pulling back
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on their electric vehicle ambitions. And his comment was, some slash many people just
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don't like electric. Now my response to him was, many slash most people have never
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driven electric. And I think this is a key thing to understand when it comes to the transition.
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There's a lot of people out there who have thoughts and opinions on EVs with absolutely
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zero knowledge and experience about them. I, for example, have never walked the Appalachian
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Trail in North America. I've heard it's long and arduous but with lots of great scenery.
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Now I have walked the Pennine Way, some of it in Yorkshire and I hated every minute
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of it. But does that mean the different paths in a different country with different terrain
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and different weather will be the same? I doubt it. So if I were to decide to walk the Appalachian
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Trail, I'd do lots of research and I'd speak to people who have done this rather than dismissing
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it because of an unrelated experience I had in my youth. And it's the same thing with
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electric vehicles. So let's start with the legislative aspect. We currently have regulations
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in place in the UK that mandate which cars are allowed to be sold to the public by year.
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It's known as the Zedd mandate. And in 2030 80% of all new cars sold to the public will have to be
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zero emission vehicles. Now this is not a nudge. In fact it's the exact opposite of a nudge.
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But am I saying it shouldn't be there? Absolutely not. What I am saying is that
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there is a lot of pushback from certain segments of society who object to the fact
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that they are being told what they can buy. It's not that they don't want an electric car,
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it's that they want to choose an electric car rather than be forced to buy an EV. So
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what sort of a nudge can be applied to help this move along? Well the primary nudge relates to
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availability and accessibility of vehicles. Electric vehicles in particular. Simple things
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like the green stripe on EV registration plates. Now for those listening abroad,
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all newly registered EVs in the UK are provided with a license plate that has a thin green strip
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down one edge. Now this instantly identifies it as zero emissions at the tailpipe. Seeing more and
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more cars with this green stripe is a subtle nudge to people that there are a lot more of these
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on the road than you probably imagined. Although the overall percentage versus the
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total number of cars on the road is still relatively small. Most lay people won't know
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whether a car is electric, unless it's something obvious such as a Tesla, but they'll easily
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recognise the green strip. Another nudge is the peer pressure one. Authority endorsements
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can sway public opinion. If we encourage public figures and celebrities to publicly choose and
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promote EVs, that has a positive effect on perception. Although it has to be a public
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figure that we respect, politicians don't necessarily get a pass with this. But it's also applicable
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when the nudging is very simple. For example, in the TV series Good Omens, a streaming offering,
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all the cars shown in that show are electric apart from the main character Crowley's car,
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which is a fossil fuel guzzler, which is quite appropriate as he's a bad guy. In a recent
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film I watched, the main character drove a Rivian as their everyday vehicle. In several
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recent police shows in the UK, the main characters drive electric cars, I saw a Skoda Enyaq in one
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and an Audi e-tron in another. And these are all subtle nudges to normalise EVs and make them a part
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of everyday life. Remember, the vast majority of people driving cars in the UK have never
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driven an electric vehicle. These are still big, scary things that they don't understand or
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know anything about, so subtle nudges like this mean they become normalised.
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So how about the way cars are sold? If I go into a car dealership and I see that there are 10 cars
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on the showroom and only one of them is in an electric car and that's somewhere at the back,
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away from the window, it's signalling to me that I might want to consider another petrol car first.
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It's like the kids in the french fries at school. Conversely, if all the cars near the
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entrance are electric and the fossil fuel burners are way down at the back of the showroom,
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it sends a different message. It's a subtle nudge. Likewise, if I stand outside the dealership
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and I see that there are a lot of fossil fuel vehicles on the four court and no EVs,
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it nudges me in a certain direction. If I go to a dealership or a lease company website
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and the first cars I see are petrol or diesel ones and I have to go searching through the
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website for electric vehicles, that's a nudge in the wrong direction. So let's take a look
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at some of the other things that can be done to help increase the uptake of electric vehicles.
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How about advertising? Now there are of course two aspects to this. Firstly,
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there's the concept of advertising electric vehicles themselves and then there's the
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concept of advertising the electric vehicle experience. I talked extensively about these on
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episode 271 with James McKee-Me and I would recommend you go and have a listen to that
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episode for more details about what I'm talking about. However, there is another aspect to this
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which is advertising of fossil fuel vehicles. Do we still need to be seen adverts for the latest
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Toyota Prius, Volkswagen Passat, BMW 3 Series or Kia Sedona on our TVs? Why are we still
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advertising fossil fuel cars when, by definition, if you're looking for a new car,
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you'll go to a dealership and ask about the range available? Has anybody sat at home and
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seen an advert for a BMW 3 Series and thought, hmm, that's it, I want a 3 Series. Now I would
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maintain that it might have pushed them towards a BMW dealership but the actual car being advertised
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has probably not made that much difference, which means advertising an EV will get someone
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into a BMW dealership as well or as effectively as advertising a 3 Series. So let's get that
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nudged place and remove adverts for fossil fuel vehicles. Now, while we're on the topic of advertising,
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why do airlines need to advertise? The general consensus seems to be that we need more
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runways in this country to accommodate all the extra flights that are coming in and if this
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is the case, these extra flights mean we don't need to advertise the airlines, do we? Are
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people suddenly going to stop taking their £12 weekend breaks to Prague because Ryanair
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stop advertising them? I don't think so. Get airline adverts off the TV.
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But if we're looking at behaviours that will help things move towards a more sustainable future,
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we need to make sure that if a sustainable option is available somewhere, it is the default,
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not the option. Let's take solar panels on new houses, for example. The default should be that
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if you are building a new house or converting slash extending an existing one, the default
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should be that solar panels and perhaps a storage battery should be the default. Without that,
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planning permission should be more difficult. If you can specify a legitimate reason why solar
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panels shouldn't be installed, then that's fine. But it shouldn't be the default and that's
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another nudge. I've said many, many times on this show that the easiest way to get someone
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into an EV is to physically get them into an electric vehicle. Get a test drive organised.
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Back in the COVID times, this was actually quite difficult because there simply weren't enough
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electric vehicles in the country. Waiting lists were long and cars were sold as soon as or even
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before they arrived on the forecourt. Nowadays, this isn't the case anymore and as a result,
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there are opportunities to test drive electric vehicles. However, there needs to be nudges
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that will influence people to drive one of them. Maybe people are reticent to head
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to a dealer and ask for a test drive and because this will put them onto a dealer's radar and it
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can lead to follow-up calls and questions that may not be welcome, they just wanted to test drive
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a vehicle and see what it looked like and felt like. But if there are opportunities for people to
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take cars out for test drives without the need to visit a dealership and hand over your details,
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this will certainly encourage the sort of uptake we're looking for.
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It's a simple nudge. Organise events where members of the public can turn up,
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talk about electric vehicles with people who know what they're talking about
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and physically drive them. I've been to several of them recently. Harrison Hughes
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and Bill Murray and Brighton have done a couple of these and we'll be talking to Bill Murray
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later on in the season. Barcha County Council organised one in Winnurch a month or two back
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and of course the Everything Electric show provides the opportunity to drive multiple
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different EVs at every one of their shows around the world and they've now done something
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in the region of 160,000 test drives across all their events which is absolutely fantastic.
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So what else would be considered a nudge? Well if you're getting your vehicle as a company car
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then the tax regime is often a useful way of nudging people towards electric cars. The UK
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government had reduced the tax applicable to people who drive company cars if they're electric.
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For a BMW 3 Series for example and I'm not picking on BMW 3 Series for any reason other than
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it's a BMW 3 Series. For a BMW 3 Series for example each year the driver is taxed on a concept known
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as benefit in kind in other words the company car forms part of your salary and should be taxed as
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such. For the benefit in kind or BIC as it's called they take the value of the car and they
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apply a tax rate and this is the amount you need to pay in tax each year on that car.
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A 3 Series Sport with a list price of £41,310 where the employee pays all the private fuel
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would have a tax liability £5,783 for a higher rate taxpayer that's around seven and a half percent.
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Now for an equivalent electric car the benefit in kind payment is three percent
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and for a time it was zero percent and those are exactly the kind of financial nudges
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that can help. The other one related to buying cars is salary sacrifice
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and this is the way of using your pre-tax income to buy a car at a reduced rate
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and pay tax on only the remaining money rather than your full salary. Salary sacrifice models
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apply to zero emission vehicles only not fossil fuel cars and that's definitely another nudge.
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I did a whole episode on salary sacrifice with John Burdkin in episode 152 and we also covered it
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on the EV101 part 1 episode this season where I talked with Cheryl Clements from Tusca about
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this. So I think it's fair to say that there are numerous things that can be done to
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nudge people towards either driving, using or considering electric vehicles. Did I miss any
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major ones that you can think of? It's time for a cool EV or renewable thing to share with you
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listeners. Tesco has added its 1000th electric home delivery van and this one is at the Cardiff
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extra store. The fleet now includes 20 vans at that store and Tesco plans to nearly double
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its online delivery vans to about 1250 by spring 2026. Tesco's aiming for a fully electric home
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delivery fleet by 2030 to cut emissions and improve air quality. Now as an ex-grocery
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delivery person myself I reckon that's a load of good news. What if Tesco would be willing
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to let me tag along with the driver for a shift? Would you have any interest in that?
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We'll see. Let me know.
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The EV Musings podcast is sponsored by Zapmap, the go-to app for EV drivers helping you find and
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EV drivers, download Zapmap and charge with confidence. Well I hope you enjoyed listening
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to today's show. If you have any thoughts, comments, criticisms or other general messages
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to pass on to me I can be reached at info at evmusings.com. On the socials I'm on
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and you can get them on the Kendall store on Amazon. Now check out the links in the
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show notes for more information as well as a link to my regular evmusings newsletter
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and associated articles. Now I've spoke to a few of you and I know that you're probably
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driving, walking, jogging, ironing or you know sat on the sofa watching this on your phone but
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If you've reached this part of the podcast and are still listening thank you.
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Why not let me know you've got to this point by messaging me at musingsv.bisky.social with the
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words say no more hashtag if you know you know nothing else. Thanks as always to my co-founder
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Simon you know he's been quiet too quiet thanks for listening bye
