The car industry needs to do more to both appeal to and help educate female drivers when advertising new models, or risk alienating them at a time when inclusivity is more important than ever, leading automotive figures have said.
This is especially the case with electric cars, with male-focused adverts potentially sidelining women who the industry needs to help accelerate private EV ownership.
“One thing we have to be wary of is the point of inclusivity,” said Ian Plummer, Auto Trader’s commercial director. “We don’t always talk to every part of the car-buying sphere. An example of that is women buying cars.
“When they’re buying electric cars we’d like to have believed they were more included, but actually the research we’ve done recently was they were feeling less included.
"This is because we talk about features like tech. You look at much of the EV advertising out there and it highlights that kind of thing and that works for one in 10 women [according to our research]; they buy cars based on that criteria. Three-quarters of them will usually look at features such as convenience and, particularly, safety. We just don’t talk about those features.”
That recent Auto Trader report, which Plummer highlighted while speaking at the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders international conference, claimed that early stages of UK electrification have inadvertently excluded many women, resulting in knowledge gaps.
This has resulted in a quarter of women (25%) perceiving electric vehicles to be more expensive to run than petrol or diesel cars, despite EVs being on average £86 cheaper per 1000 miles.
“There's a lot of education that's not happening right now in the UK,” mobility and energy advisor Claire Miller (pictured, below) told Autocar.
To counter this, she added, the right platforms that women “consume information on” must be targeted.
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