The EV Industry Sells Discounts When You Need Answers

Electric car buyers keep getting stung by costs and risks that only appear after the excitement of the test drive. I explain why the industry’s flood of specs and discounts fails, and what practical, safety-led information actually moves people from doubt to confident action. 
• real-world EV insurance shocks and why dealers rarely warn you early enough 
• how information gap theory explains EV anxiety and EV curiosity 
• why discounts do not fix wrong beliefs, and how better stories change demand 
• burning oil as an efficiency problem and a resource problem, not just emissions 
• battery fire realities, early warning signs, and what to do immediately 
• the case for keeping a carbon monoxide detector in an electric car 
• why the EV industry needs independent oversight and what GIVO could be 
• road pricing pressures as fuel duty collapses, plus fairer alternatives 
• why Norway is not a usable blueprint for most countries 
• bidirectional charging as a missing standard for homes, drivers and the grid 
Subscribe to Electric Car Chat on any podcast platform. 
If you know someone who is sitting on the fence about going electric, someone who is almost convinced but not quite there, send them a link to this episode because what they're waiting for is not a better discount, it's a better explanation, and that is what we're here to provide. 

To buy the latest 2026 version of Electric Cars - The Truth Revealed, visit grahamhilltraining.com. If you buy a copy of the 2026 version, you will receive all updates through to the next release of the book. 

Electric Car Chat is now ranked 24th in the world for EV podcasts out of an estimated 22,000 and now downloaded in 51 countries. If you are interested in sponsoring this podcast or would be interested in working together please visit grahamhilltraining.com/contact

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Transcript

Let me ask you something.

You’ve just test-driven an electric car. You loved it. The acceleration, the quiet, the technology — all of it. You go home, jump on a comparison site to sort out the insurance, only to find that the premium has jumped from £700 a year, on your similar sized petrol car, to £2,200. Nothing else has changed. You’re the same driver, same postcode, similar insurance group. Just a different type of car.

So, what do you do?

It could be that you’ve already placed the order for the new electric car. You’ve put down a £2,000 deposit. And now you find out about the insurance. You try to cancel and the dealer explains, perfectly politely, that the deposit’s non-refundable. Now you’ve got a fight on your hands before you’ve even got the car.

That story is real. It happened. And it happens far too frequently to far too many drivers. It’s also explained in chapter one of my book — because knowing that single fact, before you sign anything, could save you thousands of pounds. I also tell the story of David, reported in the Guardian, whose Tesla Model Y insurance jumped from £1,200 to £5,000 a year. Nearly as much each month for the insurance as for the car itself.

On the other hand, I’ll also show you how the timing of when you buy your insurance has been proven to cut your premium by up to 40%. Same car, same driver, same insurer. Just a different moment in time. That’s the kind of practical intelligence you will not find anywhere else. And it’s that information that dealers don’t tell you. Even if the dealership carries the incredibly weak, Government sponsored, EV Approved logo.

That’s what this podcast is for. Not myths. Not manufacturer press releases with a new headline. Not the same six commentators arguing about charging speeds. Real intelligence, real stories, real solutions — delivered in what I call a psychopractical way. More on that word in a moment.

Welcome back to Electric Car Chat. I’m Graham Hill. And this — finally — is the continuation of this Season 2 podcast, announcing the launch of my massively updated book, Electric Cars – The Truth revealed..

There’s an irritating itch that buyers and sellers can’t ignore

Let me explain. I want to introduce you to an idea from behavioural science that explains exactly why this podcast exists — and why the motor industry keeps getting EV adoption so badly wrong.

It’s called information gap theory. It was developed by the behavioural economist George Loewenstein, and the core idea is this. Curiosity isn’t triggered by knowing nothing about a subject. It’s triggered by knowing just enough to realise there’s a gap between what you know and what you want to know.

That gap creates a feeling of mild discomfort — almost like an itch. And us humans     are powerfully motivated to scratch it.

You felt it thirty seconds ago, when I told you there’s a way to cut your insurance premium by 40% just by changing the timing of when you buy it. You immediately wanted to know when. The gap opened. And this is how the itch starts.

That’s not an accident. That’s the entire philosophy behind how this book is written and how this podcast works. I don’t simply give you facts. I open gaps. And then I close them with information you can actually use. Every chapter, every episode, works the same way.

The motor industry, by contrast, tries to sell electric cars by dropping the price. Which brings me to a man who identified exactly why that doesn’t work — way way back in 1776.

I know it as the Water and Diamonds Principle

Because in 1776, Adam Smith, the famous economist, identified what he called the paradox of value. Water, he observed, as we all know, is essential to life — you can’t live without it — and yet it costs almost nothing. Diamonds are entirely unnecessary — virtually everyone can live a perfectly good life without ever owning one — and yet they cost a fortune.

The things we need most are priced as if they’re worthless. The things we merely desire command extraordinary prices.

Now ask yourself: where does knowledge about electric cars currently sit on that scale?

The motor industry treats information as water. They flood the market with it — press releases, spec sheets, range figures, charging speeds — most of it designed to reassure rather than inform. It’s everywhere, it’s free, and most drivers filter it out entirely because none of it answers the questions they’re actually asking.

The questions they’re actually asking sound like this. Will I get stranded? What happens if it catches fire? Can I afford the insurance? What does my dealer not want me to know? What do I do if the battery fails 3 months after the warranty expires?

Those questions have gaps. And gaps create desire — not for a cheaper car, but for genuine, trustworthy, insider knowledge. That’s the diamond. That’s what my worth is. And that’s what this podcast, and this book, provides.

My value — thirty-five years inside this industry, a thousand consumer complaints resolved, government advisory work, national television — is not in the credentials. It’s in the information those credentials have given me access to. Information that closes the gaps that the industry would rather leave open. Or doesn’t know how to fill them.

So now a word on another gap and that’s the gap since my last podcast and why it doesn’t matter. 

It’s been a while since my last podcast. Health issues have a habit of rearranging your priorities, and at my age that’s simply part of the deal. But here’s what that time has produced.

I didn’t refresh my book. I rebuilt it from the ground up. ‘Electric Cars: The Truth Revealed’ was first published in 2019 — which in electric car development terms is roughly the Stone Age. The last edition ran to around 280 pages. The new one is over 450.

Before you panic — this is not a book you sit down and read from cover to cover in one go, though nothing will stop you if you want to. It’s deliberately designed so you can dip in and dip out as you need information. Worried about insurance? Go straight to chapter one. Looking at a second-hand EV? There’s a chapter for that. Wondering about charging safety in bad weather, battery fires, road pricing, or what your dealer isn’t telling you? It’s all there. Think of it less as a book and more as a very well-informed friend you can call on at any hour.

And there’s a small amount of intentional repetition across chapters — because if you’re dipping in at chapter seven, you shouldn’t need to have read chapter two to understand the context. That’s a feature, not a flaw. Let’s say you want to find out about EV tyres there’s a chapter on that subject but there’s also mention in the insurance section on the possible legal and safety implications of fitting non EV tyres to your car and another when I talk about range and again when I talk about the instant acceleration that needs the level of grip provided by EV specific tyres. That’s the sort of use the book will provide. And this applies to both electric car buyers and sellers when a customer, who’s bought the book, needs some clarification regarding your specific make and model. For example does the brake light come on when the car enters regenerative braking? 

SO WHERE WE’RE NOW — AND WHERE ARE WE GOING?

Let me give you the numbers, because they genuinely surprised me.

As of June 2026, Electric Car Chat has been downloaded in 392 cities across 51 countries. The United States leads the download charts, followed by the UK, Germany, China, Australia and Canada. Not bad for a podcast hosted from the south of England about a technology that President Trump has spent considerable energy trying to bury. But let’s not get political.

FeedSpot — which tracks and ranks podcasts globally — has placed us at 25th in the world’s top Electric Vehicle podcasts out of an estimated 22,000, and 84th among all car podcasts worldwide. When I first saw that second figure I’ll be honest, I was deflated for about thirty seconds. Then someone pointed out that there are tens of thousands of car podcasts in the world. Suddenly 84th looked reasonably impressive. 

But I’m not here to be 25th in the world’s top EV podcasts. The target is number one within twelve months. And the route there’s not by doing what every other EV podcast does. As you’ll here when you start listening to my podcasts if you haven’t heard already.

Now I want to talk about record temperatures, burning oil and the double edged sword.

As I record this, the UK has just experienced record-breaking temperatures — the kind of headlines that used to feel distant and theoretical but are now very much on our doorstep. And whilst the debate about the precise causes of climate change will continue for years, there’s one aspect of our relationship with oil that is rarely discussed honestly, and I’ve addressed this directly, in detail in my book.

We’re burning oil to move cars. And we’re doing it extraordinarily badly.

Of every litre of petrol that goes into an internal combustion engine, somewhere between 20 and 30 percent actually moves the car. The rest — the majority — is lost to heat and friction. You can feel it if you put your hand near the exhaust, or the bonnet, after a long journey. That heat is not a side effect. It’s the primary product of the process, with movement being almost incidental.

An electric car, by contrast, converts over 90 percent of its energy into movement. The difference is not marginal. It’s the difference between a system that works and a system that we have simply tolerated because we’ve had no alternative — until now.

But here’s the part that almost nobody talks about. Oil is not just fuel. It’s the raw material for plastics, medicines, textiles, lubricants and an enormous range of products that our modern world depends upon. Many of those products — particularly the new generation of renewable and recyclable plastics that will be essential to a sustainable future — can’t yet be made from any other source.

So, when we burn oil in a car engine at 20 to 30 percent efficiency, we’re not just releasing emissions. We’re permanently destroying a finite, irreplaceable resource that future generations will need for purposes far more important than getting to the supermarket. That’s the double-edged sword. The emissions, damage the planet that we’re living on today. The waste of the resource damages the world our children and grandchildren will have to build.

Going electric is not just about being green in the abstract. It’s about being rational. About using a remarkable natural resource, wisely rather than burning it in the least efficient way imaginable.

The record temperatures outside my window, as I write this, are as good a moment as any to say that clearly and without apology. I’ve written about this in the book. Burn oil and it’s lost for the rest of time, turn it into recyclable plastics and we could keep it for hundreds, if not thousands of years. We need to ensure that we maximise plastic recycling but that’s coming.

On To Battery Fires And What Your Dealer Isn’t Telling You. 

Let me tell you something that should be part of every single electric car handover in the country — and currently isn’t.

Battery fires in electric vehicles are rare. Statistically, significantly rarer than fires in petrol cars. But when they do occur, they behave very differently. They can reignite hours or even days after appearing to be extinguished. They’re extremely difficult for fire services to deal with. They burn more powerfully and at higher temperatures. And the batteries, as they overheat, can, in certain circumstances, produce toxic gases that give very little warning before becoming dangerous.

The early warning signs of a developing battery fire include unusual odours — particularly a sharp almond like chemical smell, a white steam like mist, unexpected heat from the floor of the vehicle, or warning lights and error messages that seem minor but aren’t. If any of these appear, the advice is simple and non-negotiable: get out, get away, and call the fire service. Do not go back for belongings.

Here's my psychopractical solution to this problem, and I discuss it in detail in the book. You will even see it on the grahamhilltraining.com landing page where you can buy the book and also buy a carbon monoxide detector — the same type you could already have in your caravan or holiday home — that you can buy for just a few pounds and can be kept in your electric car. Carbon monoxide detectors will not detect every possible battery gas, but they provide a layer of early warning that costs almost nothing and could, in the right circumstances, save your life. Electric battery fires are very rare, much rarer than petrol or diesel fires but like fitting home smoke detectors they simply give you peace of mind. Fleet operators, including major leasing companies, are already looking at this seriously as more petrol and diesel car drivers and fleets move to electric cars. .

Why are dealers not telling their customers this at handover? Partly because they don’t want to frighten people. Partly because nobody has made it a requirement. That is exactly the kind of gap that an independent oversight body for the electric vehicle industry should be closing — which brings me to my next point.

This Industry Urgently Needs An Oversight Body

The commercial aviation industry does not allow airlines to set their own safety standards. It doesn’t allow manufacturers to mark their own homework. It doesn’t allow the people selling you a ticket to decide what information you need before you fly. There’s a rigorous, independent, internationally coordinated oversight structure that has made commercial aviation the safest form of mass transport ever devised.

The electric vehicle industry has nothing comparable. And it’s moving faster, touching more consumers, and carrying more financial and physical risk than any other consumer product transition in modern history.

In my book, I develop the idea of a UK, all encompassing, Oversight Body that goes way beyond anything set up so far, supported by the Government and industry working together. Once we have set this up and it’s working we do what we’re good at and become world leaders by developing the regulations introduced by the UK Oversight Body into an International body. 

In my book I’ve developed this concept, calling it GEVO — the Global Electric Vehicle Oversight organisation. The principle is straightforward: an independent body, modelled on our own Oversight Body building on the standards introduced in the UK. Not dissimilar to the structures that have made aviation so safe, with the authority to set and enforce standards across manufacturers, dealers, leasing companies, insurers, and charging infrastructure providers. Not a talking shop. Not another industry association run by the people it’s supposed to regulate. A genuine, independent, properly funded oversight body with teeth.

This is not a radical idea. It’s the obvious next step for an industry that has grown too large and too consequential to continue self-regulating. The question is not whether we need GEVO. The question is how long the industry will be allowed to resist it.

I’m on record as being willing to advise on the development of such a body. But I want to be clear — the industry needs people with considerably more political weight than me to make it happen. What I can do is keep making the case until someone with that weight picks it up.

Another Important Issue Is The Government Imposed Electric Vehicle Excise Duty Of 3 Pence Per Mile — There’s A Better Way Of Collecting It

Here’s a problem that is coming whether we like it or not. As more drivers go electric, fuel duty revenue — which currently raises around £25 billion a year for the Treasury — collapses. The Government knows this. The Treasury knows this. And the solutions being discussed publicly are, almost without exception, either unfair, unworkable, or both.

Road pricing based on GPS tracking raises entirely legitimate concerns about privacy and state surveillance. A flat charge per mile penalises rural drivers who have no alternative to car travel. A simple electricity tax at the charger punishes home charging and rewards those who never need to plug in at all.

In my book I set out a solution that is fairer, more practical, and more privacy-respecting than anything currently on the table — one that could replace fuel duty at an equivalent cost to drivers of around 3 pence per mile, compared to the current fuel duty equivalent of around 9 pence per mile in a typical petrol car. The technology to implement it already exists. The political will is the only missing ingredient.

I will devote a full episode to this subject because it deserves proper treatment. But I wanted to flag it here because it’s one of those areas where the conventional wisdom is not just incomplete — it’s actively steering policy in the wrong direction. And the people who will pay for that are ordinary drivers.

Now Onto The Country So Many Hold Up As The Best Global Blueprint For EV Transition - Norway — This Is Wrong And We Should Stop Holding It Up As The Model. 

Every conversation about EV adoption eventually arrives at Norway. Norway did it. Norway has the highest EV market share in the world. Why can’t we do what Norway did?

I want to be respectful here because Norway’s achievement is genuinely impressive. But the Norwegian model can’t simply be transplanted to the UK, to Germany, to the United States, or to most other countries — and pretending otherwise is not just unhelpful, it’s actively misleading policy makers who should know better.

Norway is a country of five million people with one of the highest GDP per capita figures in the world, built almost entirely on North Sea oil revenues. It has a small, dense population. Its EV incentives were funded, directly and indirectly, by those oil revenues. It has a geography and a grid infrastructure that is almost uniquely well suited to electric vehicles. And it began its transition at a moment in time when conditions were entirely different to today.

None of this diminishes what Norway achieved. But it does mean that citing Norway as the answer to the question of how to accelerate EV adoption in other countries is like citing Monaco as the model for affordable housing. The conditions that made it work there do not exist elsewhere, and policy built on that comparison will fail. In my book I explain in detail what the UK and other markets need to do differently — and it starts with understanding what actually drove Norwegian adoption, rather than what we assume drove it.

Onto Bi-Directional Charging And Why It Should Be Made Compulsory 

Your electric car contains a very large battery. On a typical day, you use perhaps 20 to 30 percent of its capacity for driving. The remaining 70 to 80 percent sits there, doing nothing.

Bi-directional charging — the ability for your car to send electricity back out as well as receive it — changes that completely. Park your car at home and it becomes a home energy storage system, absorbing cheap overnight electricity and returning it during peak hours. In a power cut, it keeps your lights on and your heating running. Across millions of vehicles connected to the grid, it becomes one of the most powerful tools available for balancing electricity demand and integrating renewable energy at scale.

This is not science fiction. The technology exists today. Several manufacturers already offer it. The problem is that it’s optional, inconsistently implemented, and largely ignored at the point of sale. Customers are buying cars with this capability and never knowing it’s there.

In my book I make the case that bi-directional charging should be mandatory on all new electric vehicles — not as a desirable feature but as a standard, in the same way that seatbelts and ABS brakes are standard. The benefit to individual drivers in terms of energy bills is significant. The benefit to the national grid, and therefore to every electricity consumer in the country, is potentially enormous. The only people who lose are those with a financial interest in selling you electricity at peak rate prices.

Another missed opportunity when it comes to bi-directional charging is the compulsory fitting of bi-directional chargers in new build homes and renovations with off street parking. The law only requires builders and developers to fit standard chargers whereas the fitting of bi-directional chargers will serve many purposes including providing mass electricity storage. The law should be changed immediately as I discuss in my book. 

It’s one of those ideas that is so obviously right that the only real question is why it hasn’t happened already. And the answer to that question, as is so often the case, involves following the money.

Now I’ll Explain How My New Word Psychopractical And Its Meaning Makes This Podcast So Vastly Different. 

So let me explain my word Psychopractical. It’s a word I’ve coined, and I use it to describe a specific way of solving problems — one that addresses the psychological barrier and the practical problem simultaneously, rather than treating them as separate issues.

Here’s why it matters in the context of electric cars. The CEO of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders said in May 2026 that natural demand for electric vehicles is still well below the level required by the ZEV mandate. The industry’s response to this, almost universally, has been to push for more discounts and more government subsidies. Make the cars cheaper and people will buy them.

That is the economist’s answer. And it reveals something important — something Adam Smith identified two hundred and fifty years ago. When you price everything as water, you get water-level demand. The industry has been flooding the market with very limited  levels of basic information, followed by discounts and then wondering why buyers don’t feel compelled. You don’t desire water. You desire diamonds.

Consider my earlier podcast on the air fryer. When air fryers first appeared, I was completely unmoved by them. Up to 50 percent off had zero effect on me whatsoever, because I had already decided in my own mind that they were just a modern version of a deep fat fryer. No discount changes a wrong belief. It just makes the wrong belief cheaper to act on. What changed my mind was information — specifically, finding out that an air fryer can grill, bake, crisp, and even dry fruit. Only then did the discount become interesting. Today, 65 percent of UK households own an air fryer. And that is down to people being fed meaningful information from people they trust like Jamie Oliver. 

Or consider the IBM Simon — the world’s first genuine smartphone, launched in 1994 with a touchscreen, email, predictive text and fax capability. It sold just 50,000 units before the poor results caused it to be discontinued. Thirteen years later Steve Jobs sold a million iPhones in 74 days with no heavy discounting — because he marketed it as a computer in your pocket rather than a complicated phone. Same technology. Different story. Transformational difference in the result.

James Dyson didn’t sell the most expensive vacuum cleaner in Britain by explaining the physics of cyclonic suction. He sold it by letting people see the dirt through a clear container — a detail discovered by accident at a press demonstration and retained because the reaction of the room told him everything he needed to know about what people actually respond to. Every Dyson owner, myself included, and I’ve two, curse them both every time I empty them into a bin followed by a cloud of dust, having bought them on the strength of that single visible proof point.

The lesson is always the same. It’s not the product that needs to change. It’s the story. And that is what I intend to do with this podcast — tell the story of electric cars in a way that creates genuine desire, addresses genuine fears, and moves people from uncertainty to decision. Not with discounts. With understanding.

Onto Carnegie, Fabergé, And The Creativity Hiding Inside All Of Us

I’m not a psychologist. I’ve no formal qualifications in social science. What I do have is decades of observation and the discipline to act on what I notice and observe.

Dale Carnegie wrote How to Win Friends and Influence People — a book that has shaped more successful careers than almost any other ever written. Warren Buffett, when asked about his single best investment, pointed to the Dale Carnegie certificate on his office wall — completed at the age of twenty. Brian Chesky attributed the global growth of Airbnb to Carnegie’s philosophies on human connection. Lee Iacocca at Ford and Chrysler. Mary Kay Ash, who built a multi-billion dollar empire. Franklin Roosevelt, who used Carnegie’s principles on human connection to develop the natural charm that defined his presidency. I attended a Dale Carnegie course on human relations. More than that — as a graduate I went on to train as an instructor. So, when I talk about what moves people, I’m drawing on a framework with a rather impressive track record.

But there was an earlier moment that shaped me just as much, and I will tell you the full story in a future episode. I once worked for Fabergé — the company behind Brut, at the time one of the world’s most recognised fragrances, if not THE most recognised. What I learned there about creativity, observation, and what actually changes people’s behaviour, altered how I see almost everything. I believe every one of us has a Fabergé moment buried inside us — a moment of sudden clarity that, once recognised, unlocks something. Part of what this podcast will do is help you find yours. More of this in a future podcast.

The Timing Has Never Been Better

We’re recording this at a moment when petrol and diesel prices are at levels that are making millions of drivers genuinely reconsider their choices for the first time. The conflict in Iran and its effect on global oil markets has done in weeks what years of environmental campaigning could not — it has made the cost of staying with petrol feel personal and immediate rather than abstract and distant.

Add to that the record temperatures we have just experienced in the UK, and the connection between what we burn, what we emit into the atmosphere, and what we experience, harder than ever to dismiss. This is not the moment for cautious half-measures or politely worded policy documents. This is the moment for clear thinking, honest information, and creative solutions.

That is precisely what this podcast is designed to provide. And the timing of this relaunch is no accident.

So What’s Coming In This Season 2 Podcast Series?

Each episode of Electric Car Chat will do something no other EV podcast consistently does — it will treat you as an intelligent adult who deserves the full picture, not a carefully managed version of it.

We’ll talk about the insurance traps that have cost real people thousands — and the timing trick that can save you up to 40 percent. About charging infrastructure — what is improving, what is still broken, and what the industry would rather you didn’t ask about. In the first edition of my book I calculated the utilisation of charge station chargers to be less than 15%. Even with new starts, this was unsustainable. I predicted that if this didn’t improve we would see mergers and takeovers of charge station operators. In my latest book I show that the utilisation is still less than 15%. As a result, as predicted, we have seen several mergers and takeovers of late with I feel more to come until we see a sustained growth in EV adoption.

We’ll talk about battery fires and what the early warning signs actually look like — and the simple, cheap solution that could save your life. About the second-hand EV market, which is growing fast and carries risks that buyers urgently need to understand. About salary sacrifice schemes and the duty of care questions that nobody in HR or fleet management has properly resolved. About UK Oversight and GEVO and why the industry needs independent oversight before something goes badly wrong. About road pricing and why the solutions currently being discussed are the wrong ones. About bi-directional charging and why it should be compulsory. About Norway — and why it’s the wrong model to copy.

And running through all of it, the psychopractical approach. Not theory. Application. Real problems, creative solutions, delivered in plain English by someone who has spent thirty-five years working at the sharp end of this industry.

YOUR NEXT STEP

If any of what you have just heard has made you think — good. That is the point.

The book is available now. ‘Electric Cars: The Truth Revealed’ — over 450 pages designed to be dipped in and out of rather than endured from cover to cover. Chapter one on insurance alone could save you thousands. The battery fire chapter could, in the right circumstances, save considerably more than money.

Subscribe to Electric Car Chat on any podcast platform. If you know someone who is sitting on the fence about going electric — someone who is almost convinced but not quite there — send them a link to this episode. Because what they’re waiting for is not a better discount. It’s a better explanation. And that is what we’re here to provide.

If you work in the industry — in sales, fleet management, leasing, insurance, charging infrastructure or manufacturing — this podcast is for you just as much as it’s for drivers. The psychopractical approach works just as powerfully from the inside of the industry as it does from the customer’s seat. Perhaps more so.

We’re going to number one in twelve months so please come with us.

I’m Graham Hill. This is Electric Car Chat. And we’re just getting started.