The Canadian auto dealer / Harris Decima Research series continues with a look at the technology consumers want powering their vehicles
When it comes to what’s under the hood, gasoline is still king, hybrids are gaining broader acceptance, and headwinds remain for diesel.
Five years ago, hybrids were an exotic and untested technology to most consumers looking to buy a new vehicle. Not so these days. We asked just over 560 recent buyers and potential buyers of new vehicles to allocate one hundred chips across four different engine technologies they could choose for their next new vehicle.
This gives a much more informative answer than just asking a preference question directly: it allows us to identify the latent opportunity for new and existing technologies as well as the low threshold of acceptance (or rejection) for each one.
INTERESTING DISCOVERIES
The results were very revealing. Fourteen per cent allocated zero chips to gasoline engines and one in four (25 per cent) allocated zero chips to hybrids. This means that about seven out of ten Canadians would now at least consider a hybrid vehicle.
Of those, more than one in four (27 per cent) gave hybrids at least half of their chips. This is certainly a major step forward for hybrids and indicates that this technology is becoming accepted as mainstream.
No one is saying that gasoline is dead (especially with new technologies such as start/stop), but there’s a legitimate contender out there that is gaining acceptance.
Surprisingly, less than half the future buyers (44 per cent) we spoke to rejected electric vehicles entirely and even more surprisingly, more people rejected diesel engines (49 per cent).
While there are certainly diesel fans out there and the technology has changed dramatically, many consumers still balk at the thought of driving a diesel. And the market is polarized — either you love them or you don’t. But even this could change. Whereas hybrids and electric vehicles have little or no real history to hurt or help, diesel has a lot of negative history in North America. That will likely start to change as newer models are introduced, but there is definitely a hill to climb.
For hybrids, some strong points are among females, those aged 25–34 and people living in Quebec, Ontario and B.C. — the urban markets. For electric, younger consumers (18–24) and consumers in Quebec are most interested in having a car with that technology.
WHAT ARE THE HOT BUTTONS?
We also asked respondents what were the key advantages of their preferred engine type and what the disadvantages were of their least preferred type.
While the familiarity and trust in gasoline is still a major factor, there is growing recognition of the environmental impact and the unpredictable cost of gasoline.
Both hybrids and electrics raise clear concerns, not just about reliability and range, but because people are confused about the technology — a reminder for manufacturers and dealerships not to assume that the customer knows everything, or that there may be some conflicting information out there.
For diesel, there are still many who see this option as smelly, noisy and having a negative environmental impact (the strongest objection). The clean diesel message still has to be communicated.
CHANGE IS COMING FAST
The momentum of change is building among consumers and this might encourage more rapid deployment of technologies, particularly hybrid.
From a dealer perspective, it’s important to pay attention to the overall trends and to understand some of the key hot buttons and barriers that these different technologies have in consumers’ minds.
Not too long ago, we reached a tipping point, where hybrids ceased to be just an environmental statement and became an alternative for the mainstream buyer.
We’ll see more of these tipping points in the future — make sure your sales and service staff are prepared and have the confidence and knowledge to talk to customers in a way that’s accurate and credible.
