Build Back Better: The Electric Vehicle Phenomenon

Customer experience is everything: with it, no venture can fail; without it, no venture can succeed.

Over the past week as I travelled throughout California, I’ve been about the problems on our way to the “electric future.” Specifically, I have noticed some issues with Tesla and e-bikes that are hindering what should be a much more robust market. 

Aside from affordability, interested EV buyers are held back by these cars’ lack of driving range. Despite the growth of EVs, the U.S. is still lagging when it comes to charging stations.

That’s a huge problem. And it’s about to get worse for the best reasons: electric car sales are accelerating rapidly. As the Bureau of Labor statistics has reported, EV auto sales in the U.S. rose from a paltry 0.2 percent of total car sales in 2011 to 4.6 percent in 2021. Globally, according to IEA’s annual Global Electric Vehicle Outlook, more than 10 million electric cars were sold worldwide in 2022; EV purchases are projected to rise by another 35% this year to reach 14 million. 

There’s hope, but it’s also years away. The bipartisan infrastructure law earmarks $2.5 billion over the next five years to build 500,000 charging stations. Shell Oil’s cheap $165 million acquisition of Volta, the San Francisco-based EV charging network, in January reflected the expense of establishing stations for electric cars. 

I live in Montclair, NJ. In my unscientific survey of my neighbors, I’d say my town has more Tesla and EV drivers than most other places per capita. But there are still too feware no charging stations toin meet Montclair drivers’ needs. It even took months to find a provider to install a charging station in our garage. It wasn’t supposed to be this way.

This map from the Alternative Fuels Data Center lays it all out: 

To put it in perspective: California had approximately 563,070 light-duty electric vehicle registrations in 2021, according to the U.S. Energy Department. Meanwhile, Los Angeles, home to many of those EVs, has just 4,602 charging stations, PlugShare reports. And metro Las Vegas, which counts well over 2 million residents, only has 998 charging stations.

It’s all another sign of the slow pace of emerging technology these days.

But that’s not the only matter in need of being jump started.

As a Tesla driver, my initial thrill as an owner continues to be diminished by the company’s poor customer service.

You’d think that such a pioneering company, Tesla would be a leader in customer experience. But you’d be wrong.

You’d think that the Tesla dealerships would serve as the automotive equivalent of the Apple Store, where enthusiastic salespeople would greet customers with cheerful offers of assistance. You might even imagine that a trip to a Tesla retail showroom would come with service personnel’s awareness of a driver’s approach within a 2-mile radius and a quick solution to any difficulty.

Again, you’d be so wrong.

For one thing, Tesla showrooms are strictly for sales purposes. It’s not like going to a regular car dealership, which tends to be independently owned and operated. So service at a Ford or Honda and General Motors dealer is going to go a few extra miles to keep a customer happy. A typical experience at a Tesla dealership is one-and-done. 

Obviously, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been a bit distracted lately. So with his Twitter responsibilities in the process of being handed over to new CEO Linda Yaccarino, maybe he’ll turn his view back to the car company he built. 

As the other major automakers aggressively ramp up their EVs, the pressure will be greater on all companies to ease drivers’ transition to the promised  electric future. The company can deliver that quality experience with a loyalty program that lives up to its name will win.

There are some positive indications that the auto industry gets the problem. One example of carmakers beginning to act collectively to solve the charging infrastructure issue appears to be taking shape.

This past week, Ford reached a groundbreaking agreement with Tesla. The deal promises to provide Ford EV drivers access to more than 12,000 Tesla Superchargers across the U.S. and Canada. Currently, Ford’s BlueOval Charge Network claims over 84,000 chargers, including access to over 10,000 public DC fast-chargers, across the continent. Access to Tesla Superchargers would double the number of fast-chargers available to Ford EV customers starting Spring 2024. 

Are other automotive companies exploring similar arrangements on charging access?

Sharing resources should impress both Ford and Tesla loyalists. But charging isn’t the only issue that can bring the automotive industry into collaborative action. The implications of artificial intelligence  is one other matter all industries are feverishly grappling with right now.

With that in mind, it’s worth asking: is there a role for advanced AI artificial intelligence to address Tesla’s lackluster customer service and loyalty programs? Anticipating customer needs is a natural area for Musk to take the lead on. Will he?

The Future Is Not  (Necessarily) Automatic

Moving on to micro-mobility, my wife and I had an encounter with e-bikes during a trip to Santa Barbara. It was telling. And not in a good way for the future of micro-mobility.

Maybe it was the particular model we tried out. But a first impression is everything when it comes to an industry or a brand getting beyond the hype cycle.

We expected that these e-bikes would offer the choice of peddling and solely relying on electric power. These e-bikes were more like low-end motorcycles with a slight boost rather than full-fledged scooters. 

Similar to the challenging experience with many electric cars, we  discovered the limited charging capacity of e-bikes. All in all, it left us questioning the viability of owning such vehicles.

It made me think of the broader discussion that needs to be had about the micro-mobility movement that emerged in the last decade. 

Many of us dreamed of the rise of e-bikes, scooters, and even the prospect of flying taxis, in anticipation of a revolution in urban transportation. However, the adoption of these solutions haven’t quite lived up to the initial hype. 

As with EVs, the demand is there, but the infrastructure is still woefully behind where it needs to be, according to a report by National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO).

Bike share, e-scooters and other micro-mobility systems have become a crucial part of urban transportation networks across the U.S. As of 2022, Americans have taken at least half a billion trips on micro-mobility systems since 2010, according to NACTO. The report offers several tactics for improving these systems, such as creating collaborative planning processes to investing in bike infrastructure and piloting low-speed zones for vehicle traffic. 

While we wait for the micro-mobility movement and the EV future to be, there are still opportunities to reimagine and refine in the transportation space now. 

It's time to reassess the strategies around smart cities with a much more urgent drive to address charging infrastructure challenges. That notion itself is energizing, simply because of the positive unintended consequences that come with tackling a problem — you tend to make other discoveries you otherwise wouldn’t have had along the way. 

Solving the various issues associated with the paucity of charging options could also open up new explorations of innovative business models, new forms of loyalty programs, and a better customer experience that would, all together, ensure sustainable growth for the electric future.