How do you feel about the idea of driving an EV? Fancy trying one out for a bit? Wondering what the range is like in the real world? Have you gone as far as to consider how the Jones's next door will perceive you when they see you've got one of those new-fangled battery cars on the drive?
If so, then now's your chance. As part of the UK Government's push to speed up adoption of low carbon vehicles, it has set up a 300 vehicle-strong trial through the Technology Strategy Board, to gain real world data and understanding on electric vehicles. Several auto makers, cities or boroughs, and power firms are taking part. Clusters of cars in specific geographic locations will form part of the trial over the next couple of years. Mini is already looking for potential users of its 'E' in Oxford and London, while Ford's fleet of 15 battery electric Focus's will be based in the London Borough of Hillingdon. Today the Borough announced it is officially looking for households and individuals who would like to be included in that trial.
So how's the trial going to work, and what's the point? This is the latest in a long line of announcements connected to Ford's electrification strategy, and a couple of weeks back at the Frankfurt auto show, we got the low down from Ford's manager for the UK trial, Tim Nicklin. What appears to have been missed by others, is that this small trial could have huge implications for both Ford and the wider EV landscape in Europe. That's because although we know that an electric version of the next Ford Focus will definitely be offered for sale in the USA, Ford of Europe have apparently not yet decided whether to offer it, and it seems that this trial will go some way to informing a decision as to whether it will or not. As the Focus has frequently been the UK's best selling car over the past ten years, and is normally in the top ten best sellers across all of Europe, the potential impact of such a decision is clearly huge. Over to Tim for more then...
15 vehicles is a very small number, but it's interesting to learn that these cars will in fact be cycled between housholds each quarter. Thus, over the planned two year trial period, the number of people who get exposure to them, looks likely to be somewhat higher than expected.
Clearly it's critical that - from a technical point of view - these cars are exposed to as many different drivers, driving styles, trips, loads and contexts as possible. Doing so should give manufacturers such as Ford a reasonable set of data to work from, and ultimately calculate real world range for these vehicles. That's a critical challenge when we talk about actually selling production versions of EVs to the average man in the street, because as Darryl Siry suggests, if manufacturers launch their vehicles with range claims that prove unrealistic in the real world, then it could have a massive adverse impact on a potential future market for EVs. If the first adopters see figures that are half what they were 'sold', they feel cheated, mislead, and tell their friends, who tell their friends and quickly you've got a situation where people don't trust range claims and potentially shun EVs.
Missing a trick with dated research methods?
Our real concern though, is that there appears to be over-emphasis on the technical side, and not enough talk about user experience research. Surely, a critical element of this trial ought to be open, ethnographic user research. Tim talks about user research from the point of view of clinics when we challenged him on this. As this is something that even old-school types in the auto industry are now starting to shun, that doesn't wash. If you put people in a room with others and ask them a bunch of questions, you'll get skewed results.
Instead, via modern tools such as user video diaries, blogs, photo blogs, tweets, video-based research, and ethnographic studies where researchers practically live with a family while they have the car, there would be a real opportunity to collect useful information about the very intangiable stuff that can't be captured via questionnaire or data logger.
Ultimately if more people are going to buy EVs, we need to understand how they feel, what their motivations are, their perceptions, reflections, likes and dislikes. There's an argument that with families who do get to use one of these Focus's for three months, we should be doing this before, during, and again after their time with the car. It comes down to understanding intangiables. It's hard to do, but ultimately, why people buy a particular car, what they think about it, and what it says about them - is often intangiable.
As a by-product, doing this research work openly, publishing it via the web and building communities around it could be used as a way to raise awareness, improve understanding and even generate greater public demand for EVs. Right now, the penetration of the web, use of social media, and cheap cost/fast speed of consumer video tools coupled with Youtube, means that this research could be published almost as it happens. Ford did it with Fiesta Movement. Why can't it do the same in Hillingdon?
The car industry has long conducted its research in secret, but it really shouldn't here. We aren't talking about why you'd buy a particular type of Ford instead of a particular type of VW. We're talking about an entire new power source, a new driving experience and an entire new eco-system around it. Right now, that entire eco-system is in its infancy and is fragile, and there's a clear danger that if car makers, politicians and the like, try to run before they can walk, then the whole thing may fall flat on its face due to confusion, lack of understanding and a general sense of miss-trust among the car buying public.
Ford, Scottish and Southern, the Technology Strategy Board, Hillingdon and all of the others involved in the similar trials across the UK need to get with the times and bring this stuff to life. A few families filling in questionnaires will be mere dust. It could be much much better.
Posted by Joseph Simpson on 16th October 2009
Disclosue - Ford is sponsoring The Movement Design Bureau's design and research work through 2009.
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