Professional EV Reviewers vs. EV Owners Part 3: Tips for Automotive Writers

Welcome to the final installment of our in-depth series where we look at the difference between professional EV reviews and the lived EV experience according to owners! Previously, we covered top-of-mind topics and sentiment for both professional EV reviewers and EV owners. Now we’re putting it all together to shine a light on potential blind spots EV reviewers may have as they strive to connect with their evolving audience. 

We took a couple hundred professionally published EV reviews from about three dozen review sites and used Predicta’s AI engine to compare their topic frequency and sentiment to a few thousand recent reviews from EV owners. There are already large gaps between the two groups which may further widen as the EV market matures and more “early majority” buyers enter the fray.

Things for reviewers to keep in mind

Remember the ‘V’ in ‘EV’: Tesla burst onto the scene not because they made an electric car, but because they made an awesome car that was also electric. Batteries are important and cause real difficulties for owners, but those same owners are 2-3 times more likely to talk about traditionally important car topics like Quality. Remember the ‘V’!

Safety and Reliability: As EVs go mainstream, they will encounter more buyers who are risk-averse and will depend on them as their primary vehicle. If these buyers perceive a vehicle as unsafe or unreliable, they will buy something else. This is one of the top barriers to widespread EV adoption today, and its importance may be unappreciated by the general media. Reliability was the seventh-most mentioned of our 50 topics among buyers. For writers, it ranked 42nd.

Value: The market is shifting from people buying EVs on principle or from their excess and toward people who are looking for legitimate primary vehicles. Value is quickly becoming more important. This was the sixth-most mentioned topic among buyers, but 31st among writers.

Handling/Performance: People who experience EVs for the first time are often blown away by how they drive. Don’t take this for granted! 

Predicta automates brand and product market intelligence using deep learning AI techniques. This Predicta-AI analysis was gleaned from thousands of sources. Predicta provides in-depth brand and product SWOT analysis - anytime - that keeps pace with market changes. Gain granular insights about your competitors’ products - how your customers think, feel and act. Contact us today at info@predicta.com.

Professional EV Reviewers vs. EV Owners Part 2: Topic Sentiment

Welcome back to our comparison of professional EV reviews to EV owner reviews! We’re peering into the difference between the idea of an EV and the real-life reality of owning one. Part 1 covered top-of-mind topics for both professional EV reviewers and EV owners. This time we compare how these groups feel about different vehicle aspects.

We took hundreds of professionally published EV reviews from several dozen review sites and used Predicta’s AI engine to compare those to thousands of recent reviews from EV owners. 

What owners love more than professional reviewers:

Handling: When a typical person drives an EV for the first time, the experience usually blows them away – especially if they haven’t had a new car in a while. Handling is an aspect that impresses throughout the ownership experience, but may be taken for granted by those who review vehicles for a living.

Reliability: This may not be the most enthralling topic in the world, but it is fundamental for widespread EV adoption. The more people feel secure and confident in the product, the easier it will be for the more risk-averse buyers to join the EV scene.

What the groups love equally:

Styling: Styling was high on the sentiment list for both owners and reviewers. The days of EVs looking weird on purpose are mercifully in the rear-view mirror.

Acceleration: Here is another aspect of the vehicle’s performance that, like Handling, thrills drivers initially and continues to do so as time goes on. When a driver steps on the accelerator, the vehicle’s response often far exceeds expectations.

What professional reviewers love more than owners:

Battery: Sure, the specs look fine. But when someone tries to manage a battery’s life, waits for their vehicle to charge, or takes a longer trip, the experience is less pleasant.

Driver Assist Features (backup camera, blind spot warning, etc.): Reviewers often laud these, but they sometimes give owners fits due to malfunctions, learning curves, and user error.

Predicta automates brand and product market intelligence using deep learning AI techniques. This Predicta-AI analysis was gleaned from thousands of sources. Predicta provides in-depth brand and product SWOT analysis - anytime - that keeps pace with market changes. Gain granular insights about your competitors’ products - how your customers think, feel and act. Contact us today at info@predicta.com.

Professional EV Reviewers vs. EV Owners Part 1: Top-of-Mind Topics

Ever wonder if the narrative surrounding electric vehicles fits the reality of EV ownership? You’re not alone. Predicta AI digs into this!

We took hundreds of professionally published EV reviews from several dozen review sites and used Predicta’s AI engine to compare those to a thousands of recent reviews from EV owners.

This post focuses on what the groups decide to talk about. This is where customer reviews really shine when compared to structured quantitative surveys. In this format, customers – unprompted – bring up what is most important to them.

Professional reviewers write longer, more thorough articles about their subject vehicle than the average vehicle owner does while posting a comment or review. As a result, they mention most of our 50 topics of interest far more often than EV owners. But there are topics that owners talk about more often, as well as a few that owners surprisingly ignore.

What owners mention more often

Love: EV owners are almost five times more likely to talk about whether or not they “love” certain aspects of their vehicle than a professional reviewer. The stronger emotional connection and higher personal stakes are both evident.

Reliability: EV owners are 20% more likely to comment on their vehicle’s reliability. This makes sense because they feel its impact in their daily lives and have much more time to evaluate it.

What owners and reviewers mention equally

Gas: Owners and journalists equally reflect on the difference between the electric vehicle experience and the internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle experience.

Value: About half of owners talk about financial factors unprompted compared to about 6 in 10 professional reviews. Professionals may mention this more often overall, but it is way higher on the list of issues for owners (top 10%) than for professional reviewers (bottom third). Journalists could emphasize this topic more in order to better connect with their audience’s priorities. 

What professional reviewers mention more often

Styling: Professional reviewers are five times more likely to comment on an EV’s exterior or interior styling. While styling is important, owners typically focus more on how to operate the vehicle and the life changes EVs require.

Driver Assist Features (backup camera, blind spot warning, etc.): Articles are a whopping 11 times more likely to bring up safety features than owner reviews. These features are important, but they form a more foundational, “background” part of the vehicle experience than some in the industry may realize.

Predicta automates brand and product market intelligence using deep learning AI techniques. This Predicta-AI analysis was gleaned from thousands of sources. Predicta provides in-depth brand and product SWOT analysis - anytime - that keeps pace with market changes. Gain granular insights about your competitors’ products - how your customers think, feel and act. Contact us today at info@predicta.com.

If Rudolph Were an EV, Which One Would He Be?

What keeps you up at night? Here at Predicta (www.predicta.com/blog), a question weighed heavily on our minds that needed to be solved before we could rest: if Santa’s reindeers were EVs, which ones would they be?

You’d be surprised at how little consensus there is about who the reindeer are and what each one is like. But we did the dirty work and became well-steeped in reindeer lore (turns out, science says Santa’s reindeer are all female?!). We took what the various historical accounts had in common, translated that to vehicle attributes, and ran it through Predicta’s AI engine. Then we looked at the frequency and sentiment that came up for each reindeer persona for each EV in our database.

Here are the official results according to how customers talk about their own vehicles, arriving just in time for the Christmas weather:

Dasher – Criteria: speed, acceleration, quickness – Vehicle: Jaguar I-PACE

Dancer – Criteria: handling, steering, tires – Vehicle: Chevrolet Bolt

Prancer – Criteria: looks, design, styling – Vehicle: Kia EV6

Vixen – Criteria: other people, seeking attention – Vehicle: Tesla Model X

Comet – Criteria: safety, parents, kids – Vehicle: Hyundai Ioniq 5

Cupid – Criteria: love, spouses, “special friends” – Vehicle: Volkswagen ID4

Donner – Criteria: sound, strength, power – Vehicle: Tesla Model 3

Blitzen – Criteria: electricity, charging, speed – Vehicle: Ford Mustang Mach-E

Rudolph – Criteria: visibility, lights, safety features – Vehicle: Hyundai Kona

But wait, there’s more! We have one more gift for you hiding behind the tree. No scientific examination of Santa’s reindeer is complete without the real hero of the Rudolph story. No, it’s not the misfit toys (no child wants to play with a Charlie-in-the-box). It’s Yukon Cornelius!

And Predicta’s first annual Yukon Cornelius Award goes to…

Yukon Cornelius – Criteria: Cargo, weather, bumble, beard, offroading, adventuring, ice picks – Vehicle: Tesla Model Y

Predicta automates brand and product market intelligence using deep learning AI techniques. This Predicta-AI analysis was gleaned from thousands of sources. Predicta provides in-depth brand and product SWOT analysis - anytime - that keeps pace with market changes. Gain granular insights about your competitors’ products - how your customers think, feel and act. Contact us today at info@predicta.com.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Chevrolet Bolt vs. Nissan Leaf: AI’s Quick Parent Guide

You knew this moment was coming. At one time it seemed far off in the distance, but suddenly it’s here! That little baby you remember holding in your arms as if it were yesterday is now driving. And with a strange mix of excitement and dread you realize it’s time to buy them a car.

But how in the world do you figure out which one you should get? At Predicta, we figured we could help out at least a little bit. We looked at two electric vehicles with an MSRP under $30,000 that you often see on the road: the Chevrolet Bolt and the Nissan Leaf. We used our AI engine to analyze the vehicle features that people mention unprompted in their own words as they review their vehicles. We let the AI do the heavy lifting in picking out about 30 vehicle features it thought were important, and then supplemented that with another 10 we thought would be helpful for car-buying parents.

People talked much more favorably about the Bolt overall, but there were areas where the vehicles are comparable in ways that are important for parents. Here’s what it found:

3 ways in which the Bolt and Leaf are even

Comfort: Leaf and the Bolt owners speak more positively than other EV owners about how comfortable they are in their vehicle.

Safety: Our AI’s analysis showed no significant difference in how Leaf and Bolt owners felt about the safety of their vehicle.

Reliability: Kids are expensive enough as it is. No need to add costly repairs and inconvenient down times on top of it all! From what we can tell so far, customer perception of reliability does not vary much between these two vehicles. 

3 ways in which the Bolt stands out vs. the Leaf

Battery: The Bolt’s battery range is quite a bit more than the Leaf’s. In theory, that should mean your kid is less likely to be stranded with a dead battery. We all know how teenagers play it safe and don’t test limits!

Value: The Bolt’s MSRP of $25,600 is a few thousand dollars less than the Leaf’s, leading customers to speak more positively about its bang for the buck.

Acceleration: The Bolt goes from 0-60 about 1.5 seconds faster than the Leaf. Don’t worry, your kid won’t take advantage of that.

So, if you’re a parent looking for a great EV option for a holiday gift, you’ve got some great options! Whether you would provide a gas card, or your kid would be paying for their own gas, by going electric this is a win-win!

Predicta automates brand and product market intelligence using deep learning AI techniques. Unlike "social listeners" that only tap into Twitter and similar social media to grasp basic consumer sentiment and behavior, Predicta provides in-depth brand and product SWOT analysis - anytime - that keeps pace with market changes. Gain granular insights about your competitors’ products - how your customers think, feel and act. Contact us today at info@predicta.com.