Ben Marks is the Founder and Managing Director of Electrify Research, a firm carrying out an ongoing consumer study into home electrification, around the areas of electric vehicles, solar, heat pumps, and battery storage. We spoke to Ben to find out more about his role, and discover new insights into the wider EV and home electrification market.
Talk to us about Electrify Research’s Homeowner Electrification Tracking Study (HETS). What new insights have you found here, specifically surrounding EV adoption?
On HETS
HETS is all about understanding the move to electrification from the consumers perspective. There’s been too much focus on policy and technology in our industry. It’s now time to think much more about the customers.
So the aim of HETS is to help businesses, including energy providers, banks, government, policy influencers, EV OEMs and all organisations involved in home electrification (heat, solar, EV and battery) to better serve their customers / citizens. Every quarter we interview 4000 new respondents. So far we have two years of data – 32,000 interviews – ‘in the can.’ That includes over half a million open ended comments (which get analysed by AI) to show the consumer ‘path to purchase’.
The point of HETS is to track how real homeowners are navigating the shift to electric – that means EVs but also heat pumps, rooftop solar, home batteries, etc. HETS is the largest study of its kind, running continuously across the UK, France, Germany and the US. What sets HETS apart is that it doesn’t just capture opinions, it also follows actual behaviours, usage, and what really drives people to adopt or hold back.
On EV adoption
We’ve learned so much about EV adoption [from HETS]. Respondents with EVs have the highest level of current satisfaction with their car (compared to petrol/diesel, hybrid, and PHEV owners).
EV drivers have the highest levels of consideration when it comes to repurchase the type of car they currently own. Not only that, they also rate themselves most likely to follow through and actually buy the car type they’re considering. About 40% of drivers thinking about getting a new petrol car think they’re ‘extremely likely’ to go ahead and get one. But for EVs, that figure is 60% higher.
EV drivers skew heavily to the top two groups in our attitudinal segmentation model, which means they are by far the most likely to want other types of home electrification e.g. heat pumps, solar and home battery. And vice versa, owners of heat pumps and solar are far more likely to either own or want to own, an EV. Our research points to a virtuous circle where electrification begets more electrification. But there are lots of clouds on the horizon, not least of which, the myths around EVs (they’re bad for the environment, the grid won’t be able to cope, etc.) are widely accepted and views on them don’t seem to be shifting much.
What inspired you to move into the sustainability industry?
My background is in market research—I ran an agency called YouthSight for 18 years, until I sold it to a larger firm, Savanta, in 2022. Around that time, I’d been getting more and more interested in home electrification. Concepts like demand response and network effects really grabbed me, they made the whole idea of domestic decarbonization feel not just important, but actually achievable.
When I combined that growing interest with my experience in building tracking studies and understanding consumer behaviour—and realised how little robust consumer insight there was in this space—it felt like all the tributaries were suddenly flowing into one river. That was my Eureka moment. So really, Electrify Research and HETS came out of aligning what I could do, what I wanted to do intellectually, and what I felt mattered most.
We’ve seen a steady drop in Tesla sales, particularly in Europe, with BYD now ahead of Tesla in terms of monthly EV sales. What reasons have you found behind this in your research?
We’ve seen a pretty remarkable drop in Tesla’s brand desirability among homeowners across the UK, France, Germany, and the US. Between mid-2023 and early 2025, the share of homeowners saying they’d like to own a Tesla fell from 30% to 21%. That’s a 30% relative drop, and it’s pushed Tesla from the number one spot to seventh, now sitting behind Audi, Mercedes, BMW, Toyota, Porsche, and VW. More significantly Tesla is the only brand to have seen hugely significant shifts in this period (with one exception, but for them, the shift was in the other direction).
The decline for Tesla is especially sharp among key segments like EV considerers and current EV drivers – the groups that were once Tesla’s stronghold. Our data doesn’t ask directly about politics or personality, but when you track brand desirability over time, you can start to infer when public perception shifts and Tesla’s decline seems too steep and too broad and too recent to be explained by model fatigue alone. It’s likely linked to the wider cultural context around Elon Musk, especially as this drop pre-dates the more recent controversies such as his infamous ‘salute’ and leadership of DOGE at the start of Trump’s presidency.
In contrast, brands like Nissan, despite minimal product updates, have remained stable. And BYD is one to watch especially in the UK, Germany and France where brand recognition and desirability is rising very fast.
What, if any, changes to UK policy would you like to see to further boost adoption of electric cars?
I’m not a policy expert, but based on what we’re seeing in the consumer data from HETS, I don’t think we need expensive new subsidies or changes to the ZEV mandate to drive EV adoption. What would make a real difference is if the government focused on the things only it can do well, like speeding up the rollout of public charging, encouraging fairer pricing from charge point operators and playing a much stronger role in public information.
That last one’s crucial. There’s a lot of money going into spreading myths about EVs, largely, it seems, from vested interests connected to the oil industry. And unfortunately, those messages are sticking. We track five key EV myths in HETS and belief in them is still high, with no real decline over the last two years. For example 68% of homeowners buy the idea that “Mass adoption of EVs swaps one problem (pollution / carbon dioxide from oil / gas) with another (lithium and cobalt mining, dead batteries).” Fifty eight percent say that “The electricity grid won’t be able to cope with the demands of mass EV adoption.” And 56% say “The batteries in EVs makes them a serious fire-hazard.”
The government doesn’t need to go to war over it, but it does need to calmly, consistently put out clear information—especially around cost of ownership. If people understood how much they could save, particularly those with off-street parking on special EV tariffs, it would do more than any flashy incentive scheme.
Now to heat pumps. What barriers (if any) do you still see to more widespread heat pump adoption?
Heat pumps are arguably one of the most critical and most misunderstood parts of the net zero challenge. In the UK, we’re at a very different point on the adoption curve compared to EVs.
When you look at markets like France, Germany, and the US, the UK is years behind, not just in terms of heat pump installations, but also, according to HETS, in how seriously homeowners are considering them as their next heating system. Most of our peers are miles ahead on both fronts.
One of the major challenges we see in the data is that around two-thirds of homeowners say they’d only think about changing their heating system when their current one breaks down completely. And realistically, that tends to happen in winter, when the pressure is on for a fast, simple replacement (the distressed purchase scenario) which is hardly ideal for the complexity of a heat pump install. That makes adoption much trickier in practice.
On a more positive note, our research shows that familiarity with heat pumps and consideration for them as a future option does seem to be ticking up, albeit slowly. There’s a growing, fairly general awareness that heat pumps are better for the environment, but we’re still a long way from widespread readiness.
The key insight here is that heat pumps simply aren’t right for everyone, at this stage. Pushing them through a universal campaign risks doing the category more harm than good. Why? Because electricity in the UK is so expensive that the efficiency gains of heat pumps are often wiped out by the gas–electricity price gap. That means payback times aren’t especially compelling for many households, even with a BUS grant.
That said, there are clearly attitudinal segments where interest in heat pumps is genuine and selling more effectively to these groups could yield a fast and significant boost to sales. Campaigns need to be more effective and cost-efficient focusing on those households that are both willing and able to adopt. More importantly, doing this will help avoid the backlash that comes from promoting heat pumps to people who simply can’t afford them, even with support like the BUS grant. That kind of misfire not only wastes ad spend, it risks fueling frustration and playing straight into the hands of the anti–net zero crowd. That’s my main gripe with current government campaigns: they’re often too broad, too generic, and not nearly targeted enough.
Do you currently drive an EV? What model is it, and what are your favourite aspects of EV ownership?
My car was stolen in early March, so I had to replace it, and let’s just say I had to put my money where my mouth was. We went from a Hyundai Ioniq plug-in hybrid to a Volvo EX30, which is a proper EV: it’s compact, incredibly fast (for someone who’s never driven a fast car before), and a lot of fun to drive.
That said, the tech has been… an adventure. My wife and I have both found the infotainment system a shockingly steep learning curve. It’s either a sign we’re getting too old, or Volvo’s UX team still has some work to do. Possibly both!
Many thanks to Ben for taking part in our EV Leaders series. You can find out more about Electrify Research, here.
