273 - The Female Perspective Episode

Gary Comerford (: 00:00

Hi, I'm Gary and this is EV Musing. This is podcast about renewables, electric vehicles and things that are interesting to electric vehicle owners. And on the show today, we'll be looking at things to think about if you're a woman buying an electric vehicle.

Before we start, I wanted to give you a little bit of an update on the End of Season Roundtable.

The guests this season are to be a little bit special, even more so than usual. I will be speaking to the CEOs of three major industry groups operating in the electric vehicle space. Firstly, I'll be welcoming Vicki Reed from the ChargePoint operator group, Charge UK. Next, I'll welcome Tanya Sinclair from the industry body, Electric Vehicles UK.

And finally, I'll welcome Vicki Edmonds from the Consumer Association EVA England. Vicki Edmonds and Vicki Reed have both been guests on this podcast before and they'll be familiar to listeners. But these three ladies together represent the consumer, the charging industry and the main bulk of the EV industry. So I think there'll be a number of excellent discussions coming from that episode. Now, if there's a question you would like me to ask, please feel free to email me.

and info at evmusings.com. Thank you very much.

Our main topic of discussion today is the female perspective of electric vehicles. Now, we have touched on this topic before in a couple of episodes, but we've never really dedicated a complete episode to the key difference between buying an EV as a woman and buying an EV as a man and everything that is related to that aspect. Now, earlier this season, I chatted with ⁓ multiple time guest of the podcast, Kate Tyrrell.

for the EV101 episode. We discussed lots of topics where she gave the female perspective on EV ownership. Now I originally wanted to take a few minutes of that and include it in episode 267. But we ended up having quite a wide ranging and fascinating discussion covering a number of topics. So I asked Kate if she'd be okay with me putting it out as a standalone episode and she said yes.

Kate Tyrrell (: 02:15

so I am Kate Tyrrell. I'm the founder of Charge Safe, a long time electric vehicle driver and now head of marketing for 3TI Energy Hubs.

Gary Comerford (: 02:25

and a former multiple time guest on the podcast. So welcome back.

Right, now we're talking about EVs surprisingly, and I brought you one because I want to, I kind of want the female perspective on this. So just as a broad exercise, why is buying an EV as a woman different to buying one as a man?

Kate Tyrrell (: 02:45

Such a good question Gary in my personal experience when I have gone to collect an electric vehicle from a dealership The the salesperson has instantly looked to my husband Speaking directly to my husband who you know He knows a bit about EVs naturally because he's married to me and I chew his ear about it all the time But I am more of an EV expert than he is and it's just this almost glazed over

visual of lady let men talk and I've kind of gone yeah no this is my car and it's you know it's a vehicle that's got my name on it not his name so I think just just from the offset it's really off-putting because you feel patronised and invisible which leaves a bit of a bad taste in your mouth really

Gary Comerford (: 03:30

It does a little bit. And I'm curious as to whether this is something that is a male to female thing or whether female dealers have the same propensity, shall we say.

Kate Tyrrell (: 03:40

I would like to think that the women at the dealership wouldn't do that but you never know I've never physically seen a woman at a dealership which I guess is a whole nother issue in itself you know it would be fantastic to be served by a woman and be able to ask you know all the important questions like I mean I'm not a mother but I know I have friends who've gone to dealerships and to say you know can I I fit the pushchair in the back?

you know, how wide do the doors open because my kids just tend to have a habit of swinging the door open as soon as the child lock comes off sort of thing. And I think it's that female touch that's really important in dealerships. Though I will say even the delivery drivers of the vehicles tend to be a little bit condescending. I literally took delivery of a brand new EV just yesterday and the guy parked it like an absolute jobs worth.

on my driveway. He drove it in rather than reversing. It made it very difficult to get out. I'll tell you what I forgot. I've got the Ford Explorer, which if you've seen it is the size of a small boat. getting it into my tiny Cotswolds driveway, which is coming off of a single track road, which has a sign saying no HTVs down here please, was a little bit of a nightmare. But the guys parked it up. He's got out. He's given me the keys and he's gone. Oh.

Why did you go for the electric one? And I just looked at him and I went, well, because I'm in the electric industry, would be a bit weird for me to turn up to EV events in a diesel vehicle. Why wouldn't you go for an electric one? It's much more fun to drive. he went, yeah, well, you know, it is a bit faster, isn't it? And I was just like, go away. Why even question my choices of vehicle?

I just can't see that conversation happening with a man.

Gary Comerford (: 05:28

No, it's, I think the word I'm looking for is a little bit frightening amongst many other things that something like that happens. I was actually in a, I was test driving a BMW the other day and the young lady in the vehicle with me worked for the dealership. So, know, me being me, I took the opportunity to ask a few questions and my first question was of course, so what car are you driving?

Kate Tyrrell (: 05:51

I was gonna say, don't

think that woman gets paid enough to do her questions from you, Gary.

Gary Comerford (: 05:55

Well, she didn't get many questions because the answer to the first question was, yeah, I'm driving a petrol three series. And the next question was, well, how many dealers in the dealership drive electric? And she said two out of 10 or 12.

Kate Tyrrell (: 06:02

Right, okay.

What was her

Gary Comerford (: 06:12

So it's just one of those interesting things. And what you did actually bring up when you talked about the actual delivery process, because I kind of want your view on this as well. Now, you've had any number of electric vehicles over the

Kate Tyrrell (: 06:15

Yeah.

Gary Comerford (: 06:26

you've kind of paralleled me in the number of cars you've been in or driven, when you took delivery of the first vehicle, what were you told about it? How were you educated on the electric aspect of that?

Kate Tyrrell (: 06:27

ahead.

So my first EV, was very privileged in fact that the CEO of our wonderful friends at Myenergi took me out for a very short test drive before handing me the keys. And the reason why he did this was because I said, you know, I've never driven an automatic, let alone an EV before. So I caught the train up to Grimsby that day, very early on a Saturday morning to go and collect the vehicle.

and I met with Lee who was like, hi Kate, know, this is your new EV, these are the keys, this is how this works. And he gave me a very brief overview of battery regen and the different settings that go on into it. And that was kind of it. And I don't know with this because Lee was obviously very well versed in driving an EV and just assumed that everybody, you know, understood or what. But I then had quite a stressful experience charging on the way home.

I didn't even know about pulling out the extra plug on the plug socket. So I was trying to charge basically using an AC when I needed DC and the car was capable of DC and I thought, well what on earth is going on here? So just little things like that would have been very helpful. However, he wasn't a professional car salesman, you know. So I feel like it's a little bit unfair to...

think that he should know everything to tell a first time EV driver. But he did kind of make sure that I was feeling comfortable with the car, which was lovely. The first one I had delivered by an actual business came from our old friends at Elmo. So I don't even know if they're around anymore, but it was a Tesla Model 3. And the guy was, he was just really impressed with the car.

He showed me the key. He showed me how to use the card against the door. But apart from that, the technical knowledge just wasn't there. So we spent an hour just preening and photographing the vehicle. And that was it. I've also had vehicles from Onto where

the handover again, very lackluster, like just not any technical information. And I think that this is a real issue across dealerships and the delivery partners is have a basic level of understanding, know the vehicle's capacity to charge. When we're sat at ultra rapid DC charger and we're thinking, well, it was advertised to me it would be 20 minutes.

get to 100 % but it's not happening and you are thinking it's something wrong with the charger so you're on X or you're on Facebook or LinkedIn and you're bashing the poor ChargePoint network operator when actually it's the vehicle and that wasn't explained to you properly you might have got a slightly separate model you might have a smart slightly smaller battery you might not have a heat pump things like all of these tiny little things make such huge differences and nobody seems to

come from a place of experience but we have made ourselves experts in this through you know lots of hard graft and bad experiences so I genuinely think there needs to be a more formal training program for these professionals to make sure that the drivers are leaving more informed with their vehicle.

Gary Comerford (: 09:34

Indeed.

100 % agree. Let me pose a slightly awkward question because you have been in a position where you as a founder have provided electric cars for people who are working for you. Did you provide any education to them at that level or at that point?

Kate Tyrrell (: 10:02

The ones

who hadn't driven an EV before, yes. Our lovely Ron was well-versed in what he was doing. He needed no extra coaching or support. In fact, I think he was actually driving his own vehicle, I want to say. He might have been. I can't even remember. It was that long ago. But we had a couple of team members who hadn't driven an EV before. In fact, for one of them, it was her very first vehicle.

So, you know, just chucked her right in at the deep end. I gave them a bit of a debrief in terms of this. These are the apps you want to download in terms of locating chargers. Try not to rely on the in-vehicle tech. It tends to have quite outdated data on the dashboard. the likes of our friends at Zapmap, you know, the go-to app for locating a charger.

Cross-reference that with your long journeys, know, plug that into Waze, use Apple AirPlay wherever you can because then you can custom your journey. This is what DC charging is, this is what AC charging is. You're going to likely pay between £25 and £50 for a pre-authorization fee and then the money's going to come off at the very end. Hopefully you'll get it back in time. If not, you know, give me a call. If you're ever stuck, give me a call. All of these little things.

but there were times when I wouldn't have known.

what to anticipate with some of the drivers and they would call and say okay you know I've seen this or I've got this situation happening what can I do and I would be like let me reach out to my network because I don't actually know the answer to that myself so you know we're all on a learning journey let's embrace that but on the flip side if you are the one providing the vehicles and you're at the dealership you know you're representing the vehicle itself you should know the basic technology information about about

know, battery power, range, time to charge, how to tuck it in at night, you know.

Gary Comerford (: 11:51

Yes, 100%.

Yeah. It's okay. Lovely. Right, two sort of related questions. And I'm coming at this from the dealer side and from your side. What sort of advice would you give to dealers regarding the best way to sell electric vehicles to women? And the corallary side to that is what sort of advice would you give to a woman considering buying an electric vehicle?

Kate Tyrrell (: 12:14

Okay, to the dealers, would say an EV to every single person in your workforce for a minimum of a week and let them really experience it in real time. Send them off on at least one long journey and make sure that they'll be returning late at night where they will need to find a charge point late at night. Let them have these experiences so that they can come from a place of empathy and understanding when, you know,

handling driver concerns and especially those of women drivers who might be a little bit worried about where they're going to charge, especially late at night, are the chargers going to be well lit? Am I going to feel safe? Because that is a consideration that we will make. And I think by the dealerships having that experience, hands-on experience, I want every single person, the receptionist to the sales director, the person who's...

bringing them around from the forecourt and handing over the keys after a valet, like just everybody should have that experience because then it can be like, yeah, you know, I drove that one last week. you might want to watch out for blah, blah, blah. Or, you know, I thought it was really great for this, this, this. It's tricky because obviously they want to sell all of the vehicles. They are money motivated. They have incentives in place to, to earn some extra cash. So,

I always find dealerships a little bit, you've got to take them with a pinch of salt anyway because of course they're going to say that their vehicle is the biggest and best so have a little feel around, go to several different manufacturer dealerships and really consider your options. And I guess that's what I would say to female drivers is shop around, don't go for the first one just because it looks extra sexy because it could be missing some really critical features like heat pump, you know I...

I don't want to paint everyone with the same brush sort of thing but my husband always feels really hot. I always feel really cold. He will always have AC blaring but there are ways to do that without using too much battery power but when you want to turn on the heat you have to kick in some extra power and therefore I feel like and this is very

generalized term but I'd love to see data on this if we can get it. I feel like women must use the heating options more in their vehicles and therefore by way of assumption a very generalized term don't come from me with the legal teams. I feel like women would use more power in their vehicles for that exact reason. If you're a woman and you're looking to buy a car check the check where the the power socket is so

Gary Comerford (: 14:32

I think.

Kate Tyrrell (: 14:45

you know, is it at the front? Is it at the back? Are you going to be reversing into charging bays? Is your back going to be to the charger? Where are you going to be faced if you're having to sit with the vehicle for 20 plus minutes, especially like I've had on so many occasions at one o'clock in the morning charge scenario. Get the apps, get Zapmap find out where those charge points are. Have a look at the environment before you arrive.

with the journey. Luckily, in: 2025

Gary Comerford (: 15:28

82 in a bit, I think, last time I looked,

Kate Tyrrell (: 15:30

It is easier. It's much more fun to drive. And as a as a woman and, you know, previous petrolhead, I can wholeheartedly say I just I love driving.

electric and that's not because I'm in the industry it's because I'm a bit of an adrenaline junkie and I love beating the the boy racers off the line. It's so much fun!

Gary Comerford (: 15:52

it's, you know, I hate to segregate, but it is an us and them, isn't it? You know, they've got these vehicles, even the, you know, listeners to the podcast will know I drove Porsche 911 for 10 years and they're fantastic and really, really quick. But even when you put your foot down, there's always a lag as you hit the, you know, as the revs build up and you just don't have any of that with electric. It's full power from zero. Yeah.

Kate Tyrrell (: 16:03

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Gary Comerford (: 16:15

Let me just loop back to, because there's a lot of great stuff that you've talked about there. I just want to come back and talk about the dealer aspect of this and selling to women because presumably if a woman goes in and wants to buy, well, you know, a Land Rover or a Range Rover, the dealer is going to sell them that on a certain...

a certain context, they're going to look at it and they're going to go, well, you you need to know about how comfortable it is to drive. You need to know about how fast it will go, how safe it is and that sort of thing. Are they doing the same thing with electric vehicles or are they concentrating on the electric aspect to the detriment of things like, as you've said, it will fit two child seats in the back. You can put dogs in the in the rear. What's your impression or your understanding from that point of view?

Kate Tyrrell (: 17:07

I genuinely believe if you're going into a dealership where both internal combustion engine vehicles and electric vehicles are on offer, they will use the electric vehicle counterpart to put forth an argument as to why they should take a diesel or petrol vehicle off the forecourt. They will focus on things like the range. They will talk about the lack of charging infrastructure. They will talk about everything but the actual vehicle.

except for the range and that's it. They're not talking about the vehicle. They're not saying, you know this is highly luxurious, look at this fancy technology that's built into this car, look at this fantastic huge screen, you know the fact that there's a massager in the seat, you know there's a massager in the seat of my new EV and I cannot believe nobody told me about that until I was literally sat in it having a play with the buttons. Like what a great selling point, I drive all the time.

to have a massage while stuck driving you know it's it's really silly things and and i feel like we're still in a place where especially with the dealerships that have multiple fuel types on offer they want to sell what they've got in in their stock right because what they sell that's on the forecourt is something that's going to make them money there and then they are they're you know being motivated by their own personal

reward and I have a real big problem with that. feel like maybe even dealerships should segregate that and have like, you know, Ford Electric dealerships and for, you know, like bring in this futuristic showroom that really demonstrates and have those staff members really highly trained in everything to do with electric, everything to do with the myth busting, because when those questions do come, it's good to know that you've got the answers, but

Also, you know, just have the answers readily available for things that they would have talked about in a diesel and petrol counterpart. Like how luxurious it is and how spacious it is and how much your dog is going to love it. And the fact that you've got these pull down handles. I was in a car recently that didn't have a pull down handle and I was like, okay, well, what do I attach the dog's seat protector to, you know?

These little things, they're just little things, but they are important and they do build up to an overall more holistic user experience.

Gary Comerford (: 19:26

Yeah, there is a bigger issue, which is the marketing of the concept of electric vehicles overall. And I've got an episode where we talk about, you know, what, why is it that an advert for an electric vehicle, it's pretty much the same, you know, it'll show the car going around some magically empty roads. There'll be some reference to an electrified future. There'll be somebody saying,

you know, it'll do you up to 350 miles of range. And then at the end, there'll be a photo of some picture of somebody actually plugging the car in, which is nothing to do, you know, that that's bears no relationship to the real life experience of owning and running an electric vehicle. They're not talking about, you know, being able to preheat the car, for example, you know, things like that. There's a whole different topic to be discussed,

Kate Tyrrell (: 20:13

Yeah.

Gary Comerford (: 20:18

on exactly how or what is the better way of marketing the electric vehicle experience. And once that sort of pervades the public consciousness, I think you're going to get more people going in and asking the more relevant questions. And I think that will start to force a lot of the dealers to have to their game.

Kate Tyrrell (: 20:23

Mm.

You know what though, Gary? I think that's such an excellent point. And to see an advert for me, feel like Gill Nowell does this so beautifully. She always posts about it in the autumn, winter months, how smug she's feeling watching her car preheat from like her kitchen while she's drinking a nice hot cup of coffee. The car's still plugged in, so she's leaving on 100 % charge. And I just think that is a fantastic advertisement and also a really great selling point.

Gary Comerford (: 20:49

you

Kate Tyrrell (: 21:07

you know, in the winter when it's still pitch black dark outside at like half seven in the morning, if I'm driving into London, I would need to leave at like six, six thirty, which is not very fun in the winter. But also I can preheat my car, which means I'm not going to be stood there with a silly old store card or credit card scraping ice off my windscreen. It's going to have melted away already. My steering wheel is heated, so my hands are going to be nice and warm.

I can put my heated seat on and the climate is already managed before I even get into the vehicle. So there's less time wasted doing things like that. And how valuable is our time? I mean, even as a marketing concept, is extremely valuable. You can plug in when you get home if you're able to do so. Fantastic. Absolutely do it. Plug in when you get to work. Plug in when you stop at a service station, when you're, you know, you're grabbing a coffee and going to the loo.

plug in wherever you can, but live a much easier life as a result.

Gary Comerford (: 22:07

Yeah, totally agree. Any final message for the listeners about the whole concept or the whole process of buying, leasing, getting an electric vehicle as a woman?

Kate Tyrrell (: 22:19

Yes, okay so I would say absolutely do your own research. For me I do like to look at car reviews online. I haven't seen too many women reviewing cars so that might be an area of opportunity for someone who really enjoys being on camera and driving electric vehicles. ⁓

Gary Comerford (: 22:39

Obviously there are friends

at electrifying.com, Ginny Buckley and her colleagues who are excellent work. But like you said, there's not that many of them. It's a very simple work.

Kate Tyrrell (: 22:44

I'm dead.

No, no,

and it would be, I always forget about electrified.com. just don't, feel like they need to be a lot more vocal because what a fantastic resource. And Ginny, you know, doing reviews on electric vehicles. I'd love to see more of that, but it just doesn't come into my algorithm, I guess. And I don't know why, which is strange because yeah, that does exist. But I feel like even if we've got a community of the female drivers out there to film, I'm just having a look around.

this car, I'm test driving it for the weekend, you know, this is, it's got this, this and this feature. That would be fantastic. But anyway, regardless, that's a whole new idea. If you're a woman looking to buy a new vehicle, do some research, watch some reviews. Absolutely. Ginny Buckley with her electrified.com content. Fantastic. Check out Auto Trader. know, Erin over there is doing a ton more on electric vehicles and just.

She's got some really interesting insights on that too. Have a look at the reviews, shop around, go to several dealerships, take a man in, because he's probably gonna be addressed first, which is really frustrating. But know the questions that you want to ask. Things like, how much does the battery deplete in the winter months? Does it have a heat pump? Am I gonna have to pay extra to have a heat pump because it doesn't come as standard? Because apparently, now that's the thing.

things like Apple CarPlay if you're using an iPhone or just the inner car tech, the navigational system, does it plot out electric vehicle charging stations for you or are you going to be using something like Zapmap in your vehicle? Yeah, just do your research and join Women Drive Electric, the community on Facebook because they are...

incredible. I absolutely adore them and they're so welcoming and non-judgmental of any new female EV driver. They can go, you can come in, you can ask the silliest sounding question and you will just be met with lots of warmth, love, respect and very professional replies which is, which is really cool.

Gary Comerford (: 24:47

I will put a link to Women Drive Electric in the show notes for anybody who's wanting to join that. Yeah, George and Michelle and the group there doing fantastic work. Wonderful, Kate, I appreciate your time. Thank you very much.

Kate Tyrrell (: 25:00

Thanks very much, Gary.

Gary Comerford (: 25:02

So there are couple of takeaways from this discussion with Kate. ⁓ There is a level of what we can almost call it rampant sexism across the EV sales space. From the dealers assuming that a couple coming in to buy a car must be driven by the man in the relationship rather than the woman, to the fact that having hands-on experience in dealerships, for women especially, will improve sales staff empathy overall.

Women want to be sold cars on different things. For a woman, generally, the car needs to be a safe space with room to deal with kids, etc. ⁓

I remember chatting quite a while back with podcast co-founder Simon, who used to drive the BMW i3. Now he told me that the design of those cars with the so-called suicide doors meant that access to the rear seats to get a young child in and out was relatively easy. But it also meant that if you were parked next to another vehicle, you could easily find yourself stuck in that triangle of no escape formed when the two doors were open and up close to the adjacent car and you had a youngster and a pram or a push chair.

and know where to actually move them to allow you to close one of the doors and escape. Now, I wonder how many of the dealers have actually ever experienced that? Just something to think about. So any thoughts on this episode? Let me know info at evmusings.com

It's time for a cool EV or renewable thing to share with your listeners. Porsche, oh my good friends at Porsche, are going to offer wireless inductive charging as an option on the all new electric Porsche Cayenne. An 11 kilowatt on-box floor plate charges the car when parked over it. The Cayenne auto lowers, it has safety sensors and the My Porsche app controls all the process.

he system debuts in Europe in: 2026

I like attempts such as this to make charging easier, so well done, Porsche.

Now hope you enjoyed listening to today's show. It was made possible with the help of Kate Tyrrell. Thank you very much for your time, Kate.

Gary Comerford (: 27:39

If you have any thoughts, comments, criticisms or other general messages to pass on to me, I can be reached at info at evmusings.com. On the socials I'm on bluesky at evmusings.bsky.social. I'm also on Instagram at evmusings where I post those little short videos in the odd podcast extract regularly. Why not follow me there?

Many thanks to everyone who supports me through Patreon on a monthly basis and through coffee.com on an ad hoc basis. Now, if you enjoyed this episode, why not buy me a coffee? Go to coffee.com slash EV Musings and you can do just that. KO dash FI dot com slash EV Musings. Takes Apple Pay too. Regular listeners will know about my two e-books. So you've gone electric and so you've gone renewable.

Now they're 99p each or equivalent and you can get them on the Kendall store on Amazon. Now check out the links in the show notes for more information as well as a link to my regular EV Musings newsletter and associated articles.

Now I've spoken to a few of you and I know that you're probably driving, walking, jogging, ironing or sat on the sofa watching this on your phone but if you can remember and you enjoyed the episode drop a review in iTunes please, like, subscribe, leave a comment on YouTube because it really helps. Thank you very much.

Gary Comerford (: 29:05

Now if you've reached this part of the podcast and are still listening, thank you. Why not let me know you've got to this point by message me at musingsv.beastkind.social with the words smashing the glass sunroof, hashtag if you know you know, nothing else.

Thanks as always to my co-founder Simone. You know, we talked this week about whether his theory that Bigfoot hasn't been captured because he drives an electric unicycle that gives him a speed advantage. I told him I'm not so sure that's accurate. Maybe it's a one-wheel instead. And he told me...

Kate Tyrrell (: 29:34

okay so I would say absolutely do your own research

Gary Comerford (: 29:37

Bye!