Women are the perfect, and to date hugely overlooked, audience for electric vehicles. But, as Erminia Blackden, Strategy Director at ENGINE asks, will manufacturers realise this in time?
In 2019 the UK car industry experienced its biggest period of consecutive decline in nearly 20 years, and with this month’s announcement from Boris Johnson that all but electric vehicles (EVs) will be banned from 2035, the situation looks to get a whole lot worse.
But this toxic cloud does have a silver lining, and that is that women are the perfect, and, to date, hugely overlooked, audience for EVs. The question is, will manufacturers realise this in time?
Women now make up half of UK car buyers influencing nearly 90% of purchases, but manufacturers are still placing women firmly in the back seat. In a recent study by ENGINE, 80% of women feel the automotive industry does not do a good job of representing them. Car marketing does not reflect women’s lifestyles, car advertising relies too heavily on traditional tropes and stereotypes, and nine out of 10 women believe it to be too masculine.
The automotive industry has always struggled to understand women. In the 1900s women were hungry for advancement and increasingly wanted the same opportunities as men; being able to drive was no exception. The popular combustion engine was considered too racy for girls who were offered slower, short range EVs instead. Often promoted as a ‘sitting room on wheels’, EVs were marketed as the perfect alternative for the modern woman. The strategy failed, and so did the electric car market. Roll on 100 years and we have to ask, will the automotive industry make the same mistake again?
According to the World Health Organisation, women care more about clean air and climate change as well as being more inclined to take action to promote positive change in these areas. As guardians of our future, women should be the primary audience for EVs but they are not, as only 34% of electric car owners are female.
This is hardly surprising when we look at how EVs are being marketed, relying heavily on masculine cues of status and performance highlighting features such as torque and acceleration while paying little attention to the more female focused cues around cleanliness, cabin and boot space, and fuel efficiency. This criticism is as true of petrol and diesel cars as it is of EVs but, unlike EV marketing of the early 1900s, today’s EV manufacturers don’t seem to be doing anything at all to appeal to women.
For me, the future of automotive is clearly female. Manufacturers need to start paying attention to what women want, how they buy, what they are influenced by, and how, to truly accelerate progress in this market.
Erminia has worked in marketing for over 20 years. In that time, she has worked with some of the largest and most influential automotive brands on the planet. She has a keen interest in the marketing industry’s approach to women and as author of 21C Woman has written a great deal around the subject.
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