Making electric cars accessible for all — An interview with Elmo

While the popularity of electric cars continues to grow with a 40% increase in sales last year alone, concerns about price, range and reliability are still holding some people back.

We spoke with Luke Gavin from Elmo, a UK startup offering electric cars in affordable subscription packages, who debunks some of the most common EV myths and explains why more drivers are choosing to rent rather than buy their vehicle.

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Q1: Can you tell everyone watching what Elmo do?

Essentially, we pitch it [Elmo] as the easiest way for someone to get into electric cars.

Electric cars are expensive and they’re confusing, so what we do is provide electric cars to people on completely flexible contracts with everything they need to run the car including the single monthly price, so they don’t have to fuss around with charge points, with kilowatt-hours with insurance — it’s all included in that one month price. It’s a really low commitment way of getting people into the cars and then research shows that when people get in, they never go back.

Q2: The demand for electric vehicles is increasing exponentially at the moment. What challenges do you see in the industry as this demand continues to grow?

The barriers we see are purely supply based. Can we make batteries fast enough? The microchip shortage is having a big impact, a few years ago you heard about range, charging infrastructure, they are being solved in various places. So for us, it’s the supply, and the cost has to come down.

For us, it’s really getting EV’s in the hands of the mass market who don’t have that luxury of paying a premium for going green.

Q3: What is currently the biggest obstacle to people owning electric vehicles and how can this be combatted.

The barriers that we’re looking to overcome are cost, and then it’s kind of lack of understanding or lack of knowledge on how much money you can actually save through going electric through the running costs.

There’s a lot of complexity. I think people are merely put off by the fact you need 10 charging cards just seems ridiculous, and the natural assumption is it just doesn’t suit my lifestyle. I think, once people get in it, they realize their lifestyles actually made more convenient and more affordable by going electric in a lot of cases.

Q4: Can you tell us about the top benefits of driving an electric vehicle to the driver themselves?

There are tax benefits with company cars using EV’s. There are all sorts of pretty well-advertised ones, much lower running costs etc, but I guess the ones that are mentioned a little less frequently are actually convenience, you almost never have to charge, you charge them when you’re asleep. And the other one is what we found in the feedback from our customers that they just say how much less stressful an experience it is driving an electric car. And also you drive better, something about trying to ‘eek out the range’ or you know, all your stats are there and how many miles you’ve got left? I know certainly, I drive a lot calmer and slower when I’m in an electric car.

Q5: What would your advice be to someone, like me for example, who wants to get an electric vehicle but doesn’t think it’s feasible for them?

If you have a friend who has one, or access to Zip Cars, just get in one and see what you think, get used to it, get used to the way it makes no sound and regenerative braking, all those things, it’s slightly odd to begin with, but try it!

We built a suitability tool on our website, it’s completely free to use, have a play with that and see, that calculates your costs and how much charging you will need. But if you are thinking about it, try it out for a month through an EV subscription, whether that’s us (Elmo) or not, there are a few others around.

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