India is among the top 3 countries worldwide after the USA and UK, leading the online chatter about electric vehicles (EVs), with 0.57 million mentions in 2023, according to a report by Interactive Avenues, a leading full-service digital agency and the digital arm of IPG Mediabrands India.
The social listening report “EVolution: Insights on India’s rapidly evolving EV market based on social media data” analyses the social media buzz across multiple platforms around both 4-wheeler and 2-wheeler EVs to unearth key growth drivers, pressing category concerns, the latest OEM and government initiatives, the most popular EV brands, and more.
Shantanu Sirohi, COO, of Interactive Avenues, said, “While EVs have been around for a long time, the level of innovation and consumer interest in this space has accelerated manifold in the past few years. Using advanced analytics and best-in-class tools, our social team studied the category landscape to create an in-depth report tracing the EV growth story and outlining the latest trends, opportunities, technologies, and consumer needs, with a deep dive into the 4-wheeler and 2-wheeler segments.”
The report further stated that EV owners have saved lakhs within the first few years, with a running cost of less than INR 2/km. It added that customers find owning an EV more affordable because of lower operational costs, servicing costs, and attractive tax benefits.
There is a significant jump in concerns regarding customer support and service centre/dealership, the report said, adding that while mentions around fire incidents went down YoY, this remains the second biggest concern; recurring fire/explosion cases have impacted sales of Ola and other brands.
Assam, Bihar, and UP have the highest number of EVs per charging station out of the 6,586 public charging stations for 20.65 lakh EVs in India. The report stated that standardisation of battery charging ports is the need of the hour.
The government, which aims for a nine-fold jump in charging infrastructure, is set to install 46,397 public charging stations for EVs in nine major cities by 2030.
The report stated that TVS tops online advocacy charts in most respects, including price, battery and performance, comfort and convenience, vehicle safety, sustainability, product aesthetics, and partnerships.
Further, Ola tops sales charts with 232K vehicles sold; Ather inched closer to Ola after mentions around the latter dipped by 13% YoY.
In the four-wheeler segment, Toyota came second only to Tata despite not having a full EV car yet, while Mahindra gained significant ground owing to the XUV400 EV launch, as per the report.
Among other findings of the report, there is a close contest between Tata and Hyundai with regard to online advocacy. MG, with sales volume second only to Tata, came out as the second-best performer in several aspects.
