Why everybody hates electric vehicles

Colin Walker from the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), talks to Daisy about mis- and disinformation in the world of electric vehicles and how to defend an entire industry from attack.

Key takeaways include:

• The reputational opportunities and challenges inherent in the energy transition
• The seismic impact that the energy transition may have upon brand loyalty
• How important it is to amplify external advocates, and in an echo of last episode:
• How much political mood music and regulatory decisions impact investment

Find all of our episodes - and full transcripts for each one - at https://www.buzzsprout.com/1121639

Transcript

Why Everybody Hates Electric Vehicles

Daisy Powell-Chandler 

Welcome to Why Everybody Hates You, an audio support group for reputation professionals. If you have any responsibility for how people talk, think and feel about your organization then you are in the right place. I'm your host, reputation coach Daisy Powell-Chandler. 

Today I’m speaking to Colin Walker, who is head of transport at the Energy and Climate intelligence Unit - otherwise known as the ECIU - about how it feels to be responsible for protecting the reputation of an entire industry.

Daisy Powell-Chandler  

Hi, Colin, thank you so much for joining us. It is a delight to have you on the show. What is the ECIU? 

Colin Walker  

Good question. Iit sounds very mysterious and long winded. But essentially, we're a small organisation of analysts really, who exist to ensure that all the debates that surround the net zero transition are informed by the facts. As I'm sure a lot of your listeners will be aware, there's a lot of stuff said about how we generate our energy, how we heat our homes, how we move around, some of which is informed by the facts and the science, some of which isn't. And our job is to try to ensure that, particularly decision makers, policymakers have access to the correct information with which to actually make decisions and engage with debates surrounding all those different issues.

Daisy Powell-Chandler  

That sounds like quite a big challenge. That's not only doing the analysis to make sure you know what the correct facts are, but also then communicating that. Right? 

Colin Walker  

Exactly, exactly. It's both. It's making sure our analysis is robust. But we're doing the analysis that actually cuts through and gets that media coverage and, you know, shines through all the misinformation that is doing the rounds on the issues on which we work. I think one of the challenges we have is particularly, I focus on primarily electric vehicles, and actually the story on the whole about electric vehicles as positive, they're great for the environment, they save people money, better to drive, they're easier to use. That's not always a story that journalists are necessarily looking for. They're looking for the scare stories. So coming up with novel approaches and novel pieces of analysis that get those good stories across that effectively counter some of this misleading negativity that's being said about these things. It's a challenge.

Daisy Powell-Chandler  

So anyone out there who's ever had to project manage a piece of thought leadership or write a piece of thought leadership and then try and attain some coverage for it. Imagine doing that day in day out that is Colin’s job. 

Colin Walker  

Yes. All by myself as well. We don't have a media team that takes my analysis and turns it into something. I have to do that bit too. So it's challenging.

Daisy Powell-Chandler  

It does sound like enough to keep anyone busy. Now you focus on EVs. But am I right in thinking you also cover other types of transport?

Colin Walker  

Yeah, responsible for all transport. Transports a huge brief. I think it's often forgotten when we look at how we move the UK to a net zero economy that the single biggest polluting sector is transport. I think people often instinctively think it’s energy generation or how we heat our homes, but actually how we get around, and how we move our stuff around is the single biggest emitter of CO2. And whilst I think the UK has made great strides in decarbonizing its energy grid and how we generate electricity, transport emissions have been pretty flat, we haven't really made much of a dent in them. And given by far and away the biggest contributor to emissions of CO2 from transport are cars, then decarbonizing our private transport is the main thing we need to do. And that is what the whole transition to electric vehicles is all about.

Daisy Powell-Chandler  

Understood, so no pressure on you then. Big job. Someone's got to do it. I for one am relieved it is you. You alluded to this earlier on, but recently the government convened a big workshop to discuss myths and disinformation about EVs. Now, for those of you who don't spend a lot of time worrying about myths and disinformation, there is a difference here. Only disinformation is wrong on purpose. So misinformation is information that's out there that is incorrect. Disinformation is false information that is deliberately intended to mislead. Someone has intentionally misstated the facts and put them out there, usually to change people's mindset. Anyone you're wondering what the difference is. That's that. Why does this matter in the EV space? Why should we care about this problem?

Colin Walker  

We have to decarbonize our transport sector. And in particular, we have to decarbonize the cars we move around. We've just got to stop burning petrol and diesel. And by far and away the best and most readily available technological solution to help us do that is to electrify our cars. The impact is significant. You know, a lot of people will go ‘Ah but you know, are they as green as people say they are? What about the CO2 that's released when you build them?’ That's all true. And yes, we still burn some fuels to generate the electricity that these cars will use to move. But even with our grid at its current level of burning fossil fuels and renewable energy, an EV powered by that grid will produce three times less CO2 over its entire lifetime than a petrol equivalent. So the impact that we can have by shifting from a petrol car into an electric vehicle is huge. Our net zero ambitions will live or die by whether or not we're successful at moving to electric vehicles. 

Naturally, as with any major technological shift, there's anxiety, nervousness, a kind of a general resistance to change that we've seen with most technological shifts. We saw it when the car was first invented. We saw it when trains were invented, you know, the canal owners were quite threatened by these goods vehicles that suddenly move things around quicker. So it's not new. But the things that people are saying, the misinformation,which I do not think is deliberately designed to mislead, but is wrong, threatens to slow down the transition. And I do believe there's some disinformation out there - people deliberately trying to mislead people and get them worried about EVs - because they have a vested interest at play. You know, we're no longer going to burn oil to move cars so there's some businesses out there that are probably quite significantly affected by that. Getting it right and allowing people to make informed decisions about whether they want to move to an EV is critical, because at the moment I think a lot of people are being scared away from them.

Daisy Powell-Chandler  

So obviously, we are lucky enough to have organisations like the ECIU that are trying to unpick some of those myths and disinformation. What can the rest of us be doing?

Colin Walker  

It’s a very good question. I could try to come up with some complicated answers. But actually, I think the best thing you can do is speak to someone who owns an EV You know, I think an awful lot of the negativity and the myths that are spread about EVs are done so by people who have never been in one, who have never owned one,. I think very quickly, once you've owned an EV surveys regularly show that 90% plus of EV drivers have absolutely no intention of going back to petrol or diesel. And there's a good reason for that. It is because the realities of the EV ownership experience are a lot more positive than a lot of commentators in certain newspapers would have you believe. 

So I do believe it's quite a simple solution. An awful lot of us probably now know someone who's close to us, a friend or family member, who now owns an EV. Ignore what you read in the press, ignore some of the scaremongering you see on social media, go and have a chat with them and ask them what it's like. 

Daisy Powell-Chandler  

Oh my friends and family get no choice about that. I talk about my EV slightly too much! And I think they're all quite bored of hearing about it. 

Now, many of the people listening to this podcast will be in charge of the reputation of one organisation or maybe a group of companies. It strikes me listening to this that your job seems to involve looking out for the reputation of a whole industry and also having no influence within those companies to get them to help you. That sounds harder. Am I missing something? Do you think it is easier or harder? 

Colin Walker  

That's a good question. I think easier in many ways. Because companies quite understandably have a balancing act to play about kind of short term selling their products, generating profit and sustaining their ability to do that in the long run. I suspect that can be quite a conflicting set of priorities that I don't necessarily have to work with. And I'm also not beholden to companies as such. It's more… I'm concerned about the products that they produce, and ensuring that people are making informed decisions about that. 

What I would say is the car industry is a good case study of how companies can get engagement with net zero right or wrong. Look at the damage done to Volkswagen after dieselgate. And I know it's clean air, you know, emissions and particulates and harming human health rather than climate change... But being caught cheating has caused huge damage to their brand. And yet I see other brands like Tesla come out of nowhere, very much embracing being the netzero transition, being a green technology, and out of nowhere they’re one of the largest car companies in the world. I appreciate there's a real challenge for legacy car makers having to transition from one way of building and powering cars to a new one. And I think they're really struggling with that. 

But you've seen some… what's the expression? Go to where the puck is heading? Like Toyota are really dragging their feet trying to embrace different technologies, sewing a bit of disinformation about EVs and over promoting hybrids and the benefits they bring. They’re a company that's behind the curve now on the transition to EVs. But then you've got people like Nissan and Volvo who committed ahead of any legal requirements to move to an all electric lineup by say 2030. 

That willl have an impact. Brand loyalty is changing. You know, I don't think the extra kudos that comes from buying a BMW and Audi captures people as much now. I think you're seeing brands like Kia and Hyundai really moving up the brand ladder, because they're producing the cars that people want or people know they'll need to have in the future better than the legacy car makers. So I think relying on the brand that existed when they're producing petrol cars isn't necessarily a wise strategy.

Daisy Powell-Chandler  

So what lessons are there about the opportunities and and watch out for reputation professionals, many of whom will be working in industries that will be affected one way or another by the energy transition?

Colin Walker  

There’s a very simple poll that shows that two thirds of the population wants companies to make it easier for people to live more sustainable lifestyles. So two thirds of any company's consumer base is interested in what you're doing to move and support and engage with the net zero transition. They don't want to see you dragging your feet in it. And if you do, there are plenty of other rival startup companies out there who can offer them what they want. So I guess it's about getting ahead of the curve. 

And I know that trade bodies for example… I sometimes feel a bit sorry for trade bodies because they've got so many different competing organisations, they're kind of having to talk about lowest common denominator stuff. But what I notice with the car industry, the SMMT (Society of motor manufacturers and traders) that represents the whole car industry in the UK, used to be like that. But it's quite interesting how they managed to actually really find their voice and actually call on the government to do more and introduce more legislation and regulations to support the EV transition. Because they as a whole sector recognize the benefits of embracing the move to that direction and getting ahead of the curve.

Daisy Powell-Chandler  

There's an interesting parallel there because we've we've seen something similar happen with Energy UK, who are the industry body for the energy industry, who made the very deliberate decision (when they hired their current chief executive) to hire someone out of the renewable energy world, and have taken a very deliberate move into reshaping the industry as being an immutable part of the energy transition rather than being anti it. And it's fascinating watching that play out across whole industries.

Colin Walker  

I can't remember, who's the organization have been really pushing hydrogen for heating and really trashing heat pumps? I'll have to dig it out. But, to the point where governments are distancing themselves, and they're seen as being too aggressive in trying to resist a technological shift that I think is causing them and their sector huge problems. And that's something that people have to realise. I think people regularly underestimate the level of public support there is for doing something about the climate crisis, because I think the people who don't want to do something about it are often quite noisy. And the people that do want to do something about it are larger in number than you'd realise, but often quite quiet. 

Daisy Powell-Chandler  

Yes. We find that time and again, and I think we also underestimate the power of the quite extraordinary consensus that we have in the UK, although it's much broader than people might expect in the US given some of the debates they have over there around climate action. 

A brief shout out for the Public First and Brodie sustainability sentiment tracker for which we have now three years worth of data looking at how much consumers value and are prepared to pay for additional sustainability credentials in their products. I think, just to echo your point, that what we find is that people want this to be made easy. One of the things that really puts them off, whether that's an EV, or changes to their food shopping, is not knowing what to do. And there's a role for government in there - clear government guidance that articulates the direction of movement and direction of travel, and, of course, a really important role there for regulation. And perhaps we should come on to that in a moment. 

But also a really clear role for manufacturers, for sales outlets for a lot of these products, for making really clear guidance for people, making it easy for them to make good choices that they can feel really positive about. Now, of course, in the EV space, we've actually got quite a lot of extra regulatory change coming from the government to try and make some of these products easier to use, haven't we? 

Colin Walker  

Well yes, we do. I think there's still more that can be done. I mean, the government has introduced this thing called the zero emission vehicle mandate that kicks in on the first of January 2024. And that's actually pretty bold. That's about requiring a minimum percentage of the vehicles sold by car manufacturers in the UK to be EVs. Start at 22% and 2024. And it'll go up year by year until it reaches 80% of new car sales have to be EVs and 2030 and 100% by 2035. That's, that's really going to oblige the car industry to really up their output and really promote and encourage and enable people to make that transition to EVs. 

But what I think one of the kind of lesser spoken about benefits of that is the quicker you get new cars on the road, the quicker you get them into the second hand market. Which is where most people buy their cars. Even before EVs turned up, new cars were still prohibitively expensive for most people, they get them on the secondary market. So when we talk about easy and, you know, I understand the polling often shows public support, but also the polling often shows that people aren't willing to pay too huge prices to make that transition. So how do we make EVs financially accessible? And I think that's the second hand market. 

But what I think is one of the real positives for EV ownership compared to other things we need to do to move to net zero is they don't just deliver environmental benefits, they deliver huge cost savings. And we recently did some number crunching that suggested that over the course of its lifetime, an EV will typically save its owners over £15,000 in total cost benefits. Yeah over £1100 pounds a year. And that includes the higher sticker price over a petrol car when you first purchase it, because they burn so little energy to move compared to a petrol car. Because that energy is so much cheaper, particularly on like nighttime tariffs. You can even put environmental considerations to one side - from a purely economic point of view it makes sense to move to an EV. You will save money. 

But yes, as with anything that higher upfront costs can seem a bit off putting, but we expect price parity between new EVs and petrol equivalents to be achieved in 2025. There's some really good bargains to have on the second hand market. I just think a lot of people don't realise that EV ownership is actually an option for them right now. They probably think it's something for them a few years down the line. But I encourage people to have a look on the second hand market and auto trader. 

But yeah, so I think moving on from that second hand market piece, that I do think the government has said, as you mentioned in these focus groups, they said in party conferences that they would work with industry to challenge the myths. I think they really need to step up and do that, and establish themselves as a credible source of information to help people make an informed decision about EV ownership.

Daisy Powell-Chandler  

Well, hopefully, they will draw on some of your analysis to do that. In terms of ease, coming back to this point about making this stuff easy for people to understand and deal with. One of the other things that has been a focus of campaigning this year is making the charging process smoother and easier. Isn't that right?

Colin Walker  

Yeah, yes, it's definitely one of the narratives that people will cite that one of the challenges that they perceive is ‘is our charging infrastructure up to scratch?’ And I guess one of the things I'd say is that when you introduce a major new technology, the supporting infrastructure isn't suddenly going to land perfectly in place in one go. All of our train lines, when the train was invented we didn't suddenly have our rail network suddenly built, there and ready in place. It was built over decades. And as more and more people used trains, more and more lines got built. It's kind of similar with EVs. But again, this is an example in which narratives and stories written by people who've never driven an EV don't really chime with what people's actual experiences are. So yes, the government needs to do more to build more chargers, but chat to an EV driver, particularly if they can charge at home and they'll very rarely use public charging infrastructure, they don't often really experience any problems actually accessing charges. So yes, we do need to keep building charging infrastructure, and we do also need to cut through the scaremongering that suggests that it's not right. 

And again, it just comes back to what the government's doing there - they do have regulatory requirements to achieve a goal of 300,000 chargers by the end of the decade. They have said they're going to try to cut through some of the red tape that's really holding back the installation of new charging points, such as planning permission and grid connections. So there's some practical things that they can do. But there really is, again, something here about trying to give people a sense of what owning an EV and what it's like actually using charging infrastructure is really like. Rather than what people tell you it’s like. It’s hard to get that right. 

Well, government regulation is focussed to make it easier. It's recently introduced some regulations that will require, kind of, to simplify the proliferation of apps there are for the different charging networks, to be able to use touch and go just to kind of access public charges and to make it as simple as possible. Because yeah, definitely there there's this challenge - you've got so many different charging companies which have different apps that take payments in different ways. Actually simplifying that so your experience as a customer, irrespective of which charging station you're going to, is roughly the same and as easy as it can be. That is something government is working to actually make happen. 

But again, when people cite that as a challenge, I've always thought that that's what happens at the beginning when the technology is new and early and developing. This proliferation of different things will happen. And eventually it will slow down, it will rationalise, and a lot of the early adopters of EVs will have kind of endured that pain so people who come on later along the line won't have to. I think government is acting in that way. There are things it could do more. Like most governments it does big announcements, it announces it's got £1 billion to support the rollout of additional chargers. And not a penny of that billion pounds has been spent yet. So actually moving from promise to delivery is a challenge they need to overcome. 

Daisy Powell-Chandler  

So that's kind of remarkable then. Because it's really noticeable how many more chargers we have now compared to even two years ago, the fact they've achieved that without actually spending any money on them. It's pretty neat. That's a good trick.

Colin Walker  

It is, because there's an economic rationale for it, and it's where the private industry can step in and do it. All the charging companies have said that they have committed £6 billion by the end of the decade on improving charging. That's not government money. That's private investment. You know, one of the things we probably say it's a real challenge in Britain is our inability to build stuff, and we're not investing in constructing as much as possibly our competitors elsewhere. But there's a good example of where there are plans to do that. The challenge for that industry is in the run up to a General Election, and we have a governing party that will use wedge issues to try to achieve its goals on this. It [the incumbent Conservatives] has basically indicated a willingness to use transport and EVs and motoring as an issue in which to campaign over, for example, its recent pushback of a 2030 phase update for petrol diesel cars to 2035, actually created huge regulatory instability for our car industry but also our chargers, our charging infrastructure companies, because they will only invest if they have a clear idea of what the demand is likely to be in the years ahead. And that decision really muddied that water and threatens that investment. So when we talk about what the government can do to make things easier, it's not necessarily just the things that it can do directly. It's about providing a stable, supportive, regulatory environment that enables private companies like Osprey, and all the big charging companies, to invest with confidence and get that charging infrastructure in place.

Daisy Powell-Chandler  

So you have been in post now for a year and a half?

Colin Walker  

Not quite a year and a half. But yeah, a year and a bit.

Daisy Powell-Chandler  

What are the biggest lessons you've learned about defending the reputation of a technology, of an industry, and fighting for the government to back you in the way you've described?

Colin Walker  

Everyone knows the phrase confirmation bias. But I've never been in a role when I've seen that at play so much. An awful lot of people have made the decision about EVs and will only read stuff in the press that confirms that bias they have. There's an awful lot of people that that means it's really hard to shift their opinion on electric vehicles. Battle lines have been drawn, there's not a lot of open mindedness in certain sections. That’s a real trend. I'm not entirely sure what the solution is to that. I think it's probably once those people see more of their friends having EVs and realize that they're not running out of charge on the side of the road. They are saving lots of money and it's actually all quite swell and nice and lovely. But that's probably the way around. So that issue is huge. And again, these aren't particularly profound comments, I think everyone knows this. It’s quite startling when you notice it in your job. 

Everyone always says that certain subjects at school you should make compulsory up to eighteen. Well, the thing I'd like to throw in there is history. I think history should be compulsory to eighteen because it teaches you to judge a source. It teaches you to understand where you're getting your information from who's written it, is there a vested interest in play? And I think in so many things, we're so overwhelmed with the stuff we read in the press or the stuff we're bombarded with on social media, I think people find it hard to see through the woods and the trees about what is a credible source of information about an electric vehicle, and what is absolute nonsense. 

A good example of that is when there was that fire at Luton Airport, and the speed with which social media was awash with people claiming that it was started with an EV, with absolutely no evidence or anything to back that up. But people suddenly started saying, ‘oh, yeah, but I saw on social media’ and it was like, it's not true! The only credible source of information out there is the Head of Bedfordshire Fire Service saying it was started by a diesel Range Rover. And people had already made their minds up. So I think trying to work with that reality of the unreliability of a lot of information and the sources out there claiming to know what they're talking about. That's a real challenge. And yeah, I've not got the answer to that one either! 

Daisy Powell-Chandler  

So what will you be concentrating on in the new year? Even if you don't have the perfect answer yet, how is ECIU going to be tackling some of these challenges?

Colin Walker  

I am going to try and take a slightly different approach, which is trying to do more to get the voice of EV drivers out there. To stop trying to necessarily influence commentators and the press to write realistic things about electric vehicles. It's actually about getting the voices out there who I ultimately think are the voices that most people are most likely to listen to and trust, which is the people that have actually got experience of driving these things themselves. And so what I really want to do is a piece of work in the new year that contrasts the perceptions of EV ownership that non EV drivers have. Contrast that with the reality experienced by people who have EVs. I can't preempt what the polling is going to tell me, but I suspect that there's quite a gap. And I'd like to bring that gap to light and encourage people to realise that the things they think about EVs might not actually be right. And again, the best thing you can do is go and talk to an EV driver. 

Daisy Powell-Chandler  

That sounds like brilliant fun. And I'm sure is a lesson straight out of the playbook that many will recognize in terms of recruiting external advocates to talk about your product. Well, good luck. We're all relying on you. And I look forward to hearing how it goes in the future. Thank you so much for joining us. 

Colin Walker  

Thanks for having me on. 

Daisy Powell-Chandler  

That's everything from us. A big thank you to my guest,  Colin Walker, who is head of transport at the Energy and Climate intelligence Unit, for talking to me about mis- and dis-information and the reputation opportunities available to those leading the charge into the energy transition.

I also feel duty bound to remind you to go and talk to an EV owner. If there isn’t one nearby then feel free to drop me a line: I’ll happily evangelise about mine and I would love to hear from you which lessons particularly stood out from this conversation.

And if you've enjoyed this episode, I hope you'll tell your colleagues and perhaps write us a review on your usual podcasting app. It really does help new listeners to find the show. Thank you as always for listening to Why Everybody Hates You. And remember, you are not alone.