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Concerns including safety in uncertainty about charging points and ranges means women are behind men in the transition to electric vehicles, prompting a call for action to narrow gender gaps.
Women are known to make more sustainable choices in many regions, but men around the world are more likely to embrace the transition to EV. Auto Trader’s 2023 survey, no drivers left: Journey to women and electricity found that a third of British men consider EVs compared to a fifth of women.
Studies have shown that women control or influence the majority of purchases, including cars. However, some believe that understanding the needs and preferences of female buyers is weakened by underestimating women in employment in the automotive sector.
While concerns about new technology are common to everyone, safety is a specific issue for women in the transition to EVS. Range anxiety is worrying for many women considering the switch, says Rebecca Day, CEO and co-founder of her electric, which focuses on encouraging women to consider electric vehicles. For example, women may be worried about falling into vision when the battery runs out of charge.
Another serious issue is safety at the charging point. Kate Tyrrell co-founded the ChargeSafe rating system after feeling unsafe when charging the EV. This service ratings the safety of charging points across the UK and awards a score out of 5 stars.
“I think it’s quite a bit of trouble with the amount of sites that are placed in areas that are not brightly lit and completely invisible to the traffic passing through,” Tyrrell says. “This becomes a personal safety concern from a woman’s perspective.”
For example, if an electric vehicle is connected to a charging point, the driver is effectively trapped because the EV does not have an automatic imaging button. To leave the charging station, the driver must first step out of the vehicle and unplug it.
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“You’re essentially a sitting duck, and that’s an uncomfortable idea,” says Tyrrell. It points out that you cannot drive a car while it is charging. “It’s a truly scary experience without a quick escape route when you’re literally connected to a local machine that people can’t see.”
Auto Trader’s “no driver left behind” survey found that only 43% of female respondents felt safe using public chargers.
The UK government was recently reaffirmed in 2030 as a cutoff for new petrol and diesel vehicles, but until 2035 it has set rules in place to allow for full plug-in hybrid vehicles to be sold. “If we can’t fix this by 2030, we don’t know how we’ll shorten that gender gap.”
Melanie Shufflebotham is Zapmap’s co-founder and chief operating officer, an app and service that maps EV charging points in the UK, showing the type of charger and the number of points available.
“When a charging network is built, these rapid chargers can be placed behind the car park, and “it’s a bit isolated,” she says, but “now the model really has driven a lot,” she says.
According to ZAPMAP data, Shufflebotham adds that people in the sector are thinking more about the user experience as the number of UK charging hubs has increased from 28,460 at the end of 2021 to over 73,000 by the end of 2024.
She says there is now “all categories of what we call destination chargers”: high power chargers installed in convenient locations such as gyms and supermarkets where people normally need to park.
Another factor in the EV sex gap is that they are generally sold to men. “Women are excluded, ignored, loved, and portrayed to almost completely alienated points by brands, marketing and industry.
One study participant said he wanted the EV parts and features described in “Rayperson Language.”
On Electric Day, she says that although the EV is sold as a “spaceship,” the majority of women say “I just want a car.” She adds that one of the hardest things about selling EVs is that cars are no longer just products, they involve lifestyle changes and need to be sold like this.
Day recalls that women’s questions about the time they have to wait for the vehicle to be charged are part of the panel where they rule out.
“You have to be really honest about this… you can’t sit there (like) it becomes completely painless and this is a kind of utopia,” she says.
Aiming for a future of claims, Tyrrell said: “I would like to see industry laws where security cameras and lighting are essential.
“The industry also doesn’t have regulatory bodies that govern the quality of site delivery, which is something we desperately need to protect future EV drivers,” she adds.
