Transcription
Every great idea requires another good idea, which is it's not enough to have a good idea. You need to know how to sell it. And one of the biggest mistakes you to make is the idea that the bigger your product idea is, the less marketing it needs.
Actually, it's the opposite. If you've got a really big product idea, by definition, that will require a lot of behavioral change. And things that require a lot of behavioral change require a lot of marketing.
One of the mistakes I think we're making with car electrification is very, very simple. Okay, the big obstacle is range anxiety. There are two components to range anxiety. There's range and there's anxiety. And quite rightly, lots of very clever scientists are spending billions of pounds a year trying to increase range by increasing the energy density of batteries. And that's a very, very good thing.
What nobody seems to have noticed is that for a fraction of that money, rather than increasing range, you can reduce anxiety. Now, two tips, okay? One, there is no reason for your electric car to display both digits of the battery percentage when you're at 75%. Okay? It just weirds people out. Your petrol gauge doesn't do that. Okay? Your petrol gauge is full, 3/4 full, half full, quarter full, an eighth full, and oh the lights come on. Why doesn't a battery gauge in an electric car just say 90% plus, 80% plus? I don't need to see each individual percentage of depletion.
Secondly, a large part of range anxiety isn't even range anxiety. It's infrastructure anxiety. And the problem there is that petrol stations are really visible, whereas electric car charges are hidden around the back of some industrial estate in a darkly lit exclave of the main car park. What we need is more signage, more illumination. We need legislation to basically say car charging in 5 miles, car charging in 3 miles.
Or you could simply go to Google and say on Google Maps when you're on Android Auto or Apple CarPlay, there's just a little window on the display in your car which tells you on route where your next available car charger is and how many of them are available. Has an increased range. reduced anxiety.