NADA to Get Car Dealers Educated So They Can Help Shoppers Buy EVs

• The National Auto Dealers Association (NADA) announced today that it will work with Chargeway to teach EV sales techniques to member dealers.

• A pilot program in Oregon made it clear that many dealers need to get their salespeople up to speed on electric vehicles—but once they did, EV sales went up.

• Charging methodology is one thing dealers need to be able to explain, but there are many other features, from finding charging stations to claiming tax incentives for EV purchases.

For more than a decade, franchised auto dealers have been more of an impediment than a help in selling electric cars. But that may be about to change. If all goes well, new-car shoppers may start to find dealerships are happy to help educate them about how EVs are used—and, in particular, how they're charged, a major source of misunderstanding among not only shoppers but salespeople themselves.

Today, the National Auto Dealers Association (NADA) announced it has chosen Chargeway to help its member dealerships explain EV charging, showing how shoppers can travel in electric vehicles by using charging stations along their routes. NADA and Chargeway previewed the news exclusively for Car and Driver.

Soon, shoppers may be able to enter their travel patterns into dealer websites to discover how and where to charge EVs locally and on road trips. Dealer sites will lay out all relevant financial incentives from the federal and state governments, plus local electric utilities. The goal is to educate shoppers on how EVs can fit into their lives before they ever set foot in a dealership.

Chargeway first gained recognition in 2017 for its simple, intuitive, color-coded visual language for identifying and distinguishing EV charging stations. It quickly expanded into helping Oregon understand and sell EVs more effectively by placing large kiosks right in showrooms. Those let salespeople and shoppers together find charging sites locally and along routes a driver specified, showing how to route a trip among charging stations and how much (or little) time to spend there.

Early on, the Oregon Auto Dealers Association recognized how challenged its members were in selling EVs effectively, giving it an incentive to work with Chargeway to pilot the system at willing dealerships. Kiosks also included information on incentives from the state of Oregon for purchasing an EV, and from relevant local electric utilities on charging rates, incentives for installing a home charging station, and other EV-related purchases.

A small test of several dealers provided conclusive proof: Effectively educating shoppers about EV charging and how the cars could do longer road trips let dealers with Chargeway kiosks sell more EVs than comparable dealers without them.