Britain’s first wave of EV drivers got a great deal. The roughly two million engaged early adopters were easy to reach and willing to seek out innovative smart charging propositions. They are already experiencing lower bills and delivering real value back to our electricity grid.
The next seven million EV drivers are a more diverse audience, including renters on lower incomes and those less used to navigating new energy technology. As EV adoption tips into the mass market, the question is whether they will get a better or worse deal than the early adopters.
EV Curious: Who are they and what’s resting on them?
Ohme commissioned Survation to poll the ‘EV Curious’ - those who see an EV in their future, but have not yet committed [1]. 42% are renters and only 35% earn above £40,000. Their understanding and propensity for smart charging is very different to that of early adopters.
Yet smart charging remains the most scalable form of consumer flexibility and this group is expected to help deliver an additional 4GW of it by 2030 to meet Government’s Clean Power ambitions. The benefits of which show up on everyone’s bill regardless of EV ownership; through lower balancing costs, reduced spend on network reinforcement and lower wholesale prices.
However, only 47% of today’s engaged early adopters utilise the type of charging that will fast unlock this flexibility. If that pattern also holds for the EV Curious, engagement will likely plateau and we estimate a 1.5GW shortfall against the target.
Can we win them over?
It would be easy to kick this group into the "hard to reach" bucket, but perhaps more accurate to call them the "not yet reached" majority.
Nearly three-quarters find smart charging appealing once it's explained to them, so this is not an audience that needs convincing so much as one that has not yet been approached adequately.
No need to reinvent the wheel
Getting consumers on side has always been the bigger battle - people are people. While infrastructure can be built to a plan, consumer trust and engagement cannot. People need to feel savings, to feel innovation that is genuinely accessible to them and to feel well-looked after across an asset’s lifecycle.
This is when the real benefits of electrification transfer to consumers: a mass devolution of power through millions of trusted distributed assets, cutting bills and helping balance the grid.
For the EV Curious, industry is already pushing at an open door; Government's job is to keep it open for everyone, equally. Our polling and trials point to three key actions, each of which answer the same consumer needs:
- Encourage real and diverse rewards, so that savings are visible: Ohme’s CrowdFlex trial showed that financially vulnerable households take part in flexibility at the same rate as others when the reward is tangible and friction is low [2]. Likewise, only 6% of the EV Curious say no incentive would move them. Ensuring more of the value that flexibility creates flows back to consumers is the priority.
- Ensure a level playing field for new entrants, so that innovation is genuinely accessible: A small number of incumbents will not on their own produce all the propositions that consumers and the energy system need to bring the next wave on board. Market rules should encourage a range of actors competing to produce the best proposition.
- Recognise that trust is already spread across different providers, so that people feel well looked after. Among the EV Curious, 35% would trust their energy supplier with smart charging, 24% their charger brand and one in ten, neither [3]. Routes to consumer engagement should reflect this diversity in trust to reach the whole market.
A two-tier transition is not inevitable for the EV Curious. It is a choice about whether Government holds the door open for competition, prioritises tangible rewards and allows multiple routes to engagement.
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Endnotes:
[1] Ohme commissioned Survation to conduct nationally representative polling of UK adults (n=2,081, fieldwork 10–15 June 2026) to underpin the Gigawatt Gap report. ‘EV Curious’ refers to the 54% of respondents who said they were ‘fairly likely’ or ‘not that likely’ to purchase an electric vehicle, the persuadable majority who will determine whether smart charging reaches scale.
[2] CrowdFlex-Customer-Feedback_End-of-Trial-Insights.pdf
[3] Other options included electricity network operator, car manufacturer, specialist smart charging provider and ‘don’t know’.
