Electric Car Driving Habits Before, During and After COVID-19

Despite the rallying cry to ‘Stay at Home’ coming from all directions, a minority of people have been repeatedly flouting lockdown rules, with 9,000 fines issued so far. We’re proud to say that elmo customers are not among them. And we’ve got the data to prove it!

Using our onboard telematics, we can see that the total mileage driven in April was down 82% compared to March, with the number of individual trips down 55%. In other words, longer journeys and commuting were out and only short trips were being taken e.g. for weekly groceries.

Customers living in towns and cities with easy access to groceries have even foregone the pleasure of driving their electric car entirely.

In current circumstances, this is hardly surprising. Things will really start to get interesting as the lockdown gradually eases and people begin to move around again…

How will we drive post-lockdown?

On the one hand, we expect to see an upturn in people wanting access to private transport and avoiding the confined spaces of public transport. There may also be an increased appreciation for maintaining the newly won clean air in cities. Electric cars, mopeds, bicycles and walking could start to become the preferred mobility solutions for many.

On the other hand, we expect a decrease in commuting as more people start to work from home more often. It is also likely that an economic downturn will affect consumers’ desire to buy or commit to long leases on cars. This could pose a problem for the car market generally, but car subscriptions, which come without the burden of high upfront costs and long contract lengths, could give consumers the flexibility and affordability they need in uncertain times.

Why we show our customers their driving data

Helping customers understand the potential benefits of an electric car subscription for them (or not as the case may be) is an important part of what we are trying to do at elmo.

That’s why our Suitability Tool helps people to understand if an electric car could work for them; and that’s why, included in a standard subscription, elmo customers get ‘Driving Data’ as part of their online dashboard.

We show our customers information including:

• Driving Score – this starts at 100% and reduces based on time spent above speed limits and any harsh turning, acceleration or braking.
• Mileage & Trips – a breakdown of individual trips and total mileage by month/total.
• Savings – how much CO2 and fuel money they’ve saved by driving their electric car.

We also plan to publish a live leaderboard of driving scores to incentivise some healthy competition! (We already do this by email – see example below – but think it would be a cool feature to add the customer’s online dashboard).

We do this both because we want to encourage safe and sustainable driving. And because we want to help our customers understand their actual driving behaviour and how that is reflected in what they spend or save on their mobility choice.

This is the quick email summary we sent to our best driver in April: