Electrify Expo, which has spent the last five years putting on festivals across the U.S. to educate people about electric vehicles, is launching a demo experience where people can take an EV home for a weekend. The first company to partner up is Tesla, and Electrify Expo CEO BJ Birtwell says more brands will come on board in the near future.
“It’s an opportunity for our attendees at Electrify Expo to have a no-pressure, non-sales-y experience with an electric vehicle on their terms, running errands and fitting this vehicle into their lives to see if it actually makes sense for them or not,” Birtwell told TechCrunch in an interview.
Driving an electric vehicle for the first time can often convince people to make the jump from internal combustion engines. There’s also strong demand for these kinds of experiences. Late last year, Consumer Reports found that half of all consumers in the U.S. are interested in test-driving an EV.
The new “Electrify Weekender” experience will be available to Electrify Expo attendees (who also need a driver’s license and auto insurance) starting with the Los Angeles festival, which begins on June 21. Birtwell said he hopes to use the Los Angeles launch as an opportunity to iron out any problems ahead of the other festivals this year in Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago, New York, and Dallas.
For Tesla, the Electrify Weekender program could be a way to reach potential customers who may still be unfamiliar with or even wary of the brand — perhaps offering a boost at a time when the company’s sales are flagging due to an aging lineup, increased competition, and the damage CEO Elon Musk has done to his company’s image. Tesla did not respond to a request for comment about the program.
Birtwell said the Electrify Weekender program is a natural extension of the kinds of EV demos his festival has been offering for years. While those demos are brief — often lasting around 8 to 10 minutes — he said they have played an important role in converting attendees into EV buyers.
“People who are buying a ticket to come to our festival are often cross-shopping a bunch of different electric cars and trucks, like they’re literally coming to our event as if we are the 2.0 version of an auto mall,” he said. “Then they’re getting into all these cars and figuring out what they want to buy. So that experience alone helps people who are really loaded low in the purchase funnel to experience to to convert.”
Car companies have long offered similar extended test drive programs, but Birtwell said those often leave interested buyers feeling pressure from their local dealership to make a purchase. He expects Electrify Expo to act as an intermediary of sorts that can blunt that pressure, while also attracting consumers who may not have ever signed up for such a test drive to begin with. Ultimately, Birtwell said he expects thousands of people will take Electrify Expo up on the offer.
“If we’re going to drive broader EV adoption beyond half the population, that means we need to appeal to everybody,” he said. That means especially targeting consumers who are “curious and skeptical about EVs.”
