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EV charging cable in an evening city street

How utilities can maximize EV adoption by building confidence

Authors

11 minute read 14 Apr 2025

Liesel Ferguson and Julia Szynal, all of the People Consulting practice within Ernst & Young LLP, as well as Michael Conklin and Sara Ganowski of the E-Mobility practice within Ernst & Young LLP, contributed to this article.

The road to an EV future looks promising — and bumpy. Three use cases reflect how utilities can accelerate their plans for change.

In brief
  • Prices of EVs are falling and sales are climbing. But geopolitical shifts, economic uncertainty and driver preferences complicate the road ahead.
  • Utilities must drive these changes in a way that tells an encouraging story about the change experience to stakeholders, informed by their needs and concerns.
  • Focus on building awareness of and confidence in change in fleet electrification, charging incentives for customers and charging infrastructure upgrades.

Sales of electric vehicles (EVs) and plug-in hybrids reached over 17 million globally in 2024, a jump from about 2 million five years earlier. Partly fueled by lower prices, including a 20% drop in the cost of lithium-ion batteries just in 2024, the EV momentum is building more dramatically outside of the US, but sales here still rose 9% for the year, and many top domestic automakers have made large bets on the green revolution.1, 2 For utilities, this presents a growing opportunity — and also a prickly challenge, as the transition has run into shifting geopolitical forces and consumer preferences.

How can utilities effectively manage and encourage this journey? As EV prices keep falling, widescale adoption strangely feels like it’s simultaneously advancing and stuck in neutral. Although often overstated, many household and commercial customers express concerns about how long they can drive on a charge, where to find charging stations, how long it takes to charge a battery fully, and how much it costs to handle repairs and maintenance, as well as replace a battery. 

Furthermore, continuously shifting political headwinds in the US and EU, coupled with state and local governments implementing different regulations and mandates related to EVs, complicate travel and ownership across the board — whether for individuals or businesses with fleets — making the EV adoption equation more uncertain than ever.

The 2025 EY Future of Energy Survey of power and utilities executives captures this duality in the market, in which leaders are focused on EV infrastructure yet also still trying to capitalize on the opportunities. 

EV charging stations_landscape
EV charging stations_portrait

Source: EY Future of Energy Survey (2025 and 2021) 


How EY can help

In support of new or existing EV-focused programs, utilities often lack a tailored strategy that personalizes the change and builds confidence among impacted stakeholder groups, inviting them to ride shotgun along the journey. Here's what such a strategy should look like, tailored for specific use cases that utilities are pursuing during this encouraging, but sometimes bumpy, ride into our EV future.

 

Create a value story and focus on the experience

For organizations undergoing significant change, impacts on employees, customers and other stakeholders should be thought of something less to be managed and more to be experienced. A good strategy that helps people along the change journey focuses on telling the story as to why change is necessary, identifying what will change and for whom, and then developing a detailed and thoughtful plan that tailors that experience to impacted stakeholders and prepares them. Successful mechanisms for driving change engage stakeholders throughout the transformation lifecycle, from first awareness through to realization of the change. That way, they have a clear path on which to experience the change, ultimately empowering them to be change ambassadors.

 

A crucial step in helping people experience change correctly is to define a clear EV value story and case for change — for the utility itself and also for the market, whether it’s targeting businesses or individuals who are interested in the transition or employees who are being asked to make the switch for their jobs. Instead of allowing questions to fester without answers, this effort describes “what’s in it for me” to impacted stakeholders — meeting their needs, addressing pain points and sustaining purposeful connection to work.

 

Let’s examine how this works in practice for utilities under three specific EV use cases. While the reasons and benefits for each stakeholder group likely require unique customization for maximum impact, the need for supporting these groups through the changes in various forms is clear.


EV adoption
1

Case #1

Fleet electrification

Utilities face a complex equation of cost and incentives as they consider whether they are operationally suited for EVs.

Utilities are exploring whether it’s worthwhile to upgrade their fleets to EVs. It’s a decision that must encompass factors of cost, geography, electrical infrastructure, and especially the impact on drivers and their ability to confidently complete tasks. Because fleet electrification is typically a largescale change for a utility, a robust, multifaceted strategy and plan to support the change experience for impacted stakeholders both within and, as relevant, outside of the organization should be in place to help mitigate organizational readiness and adoption risks of the change.

In keeping with leading practice around how to drive change, defining the value proposition at the organizational level is an essential first step. This value proposition in this use case can be defined as improving the company’s bottom line through lowering the total cost of ownership (TCO) of their fleet, alongside meeting public health and environment goals. For employees, EVs can free up funds from reduced costs to be invested into enhanced comforts for drivers, and driving routes can be optimized to meet charging requirements, further enhancing productivity at each job site.

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    Points of resistance can be numerous but also addressed through confident approaches to addressing change:

    • Higher initial purchase price of EVs: While EVs can be less costly to maintain, the upfront cost is often higher than traditional internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles. To support leadership alignment and buy-in for this change, a cost-benefit analysis can demonstrate the long-term financial and environmental benefits of purchasing EVs, and these findings can be shared with executives in a leadership alignment workshop.

    • Specialized skills to maintain and repair EVs: Because these skills are potentially new to the organization, the utility must determine whether it has them (and where) and whether to upskill existing employees or recruit new talent. A workforce skills assessment can identify which current employees have the skill set required and determine how many others may need to be hired.

    • Fleet operations and scheduling affected by charging times: While refueling an ICE vehicle does not take as much time, charging an EV can take anywhere from 20 minutes to about 10 hours, depending on the starting level of charge; cost can also vary widely depending on when charging occurs. A change impact assessment will confirm current and future state processes for fueling, deploying trucks and more, which can support the company’s understanding of how to integrate EV charging in a way that minimizes business disruption.

    • Overall complexity is too much to manage: The coordination of internal stakeholders and external partnerships, as well as other issues like off-peak charging, can be daunting without thoughtful preparation. An overall strategy and plan for supporting the changes that will come about, including a change champion network and extensive communications plan, will help bring all relevant parties along the journey in a way that builds awareness and understanding and gets ahead of obstacles. These could otherwise result in slowdowns to the fleet electrification effort and disruptions to business operations.
    EV adoption
    2

    Case #2

    EV charging incentive program

    Many customers do not fully understand how their utilities can often help them make it easier to charge their EVs at home, limiting adoption.

    Vehicle electrification presents utilities with new challenges in effectively balancing demand on the grid, which the utilities industry has partly met with incentivized charging programs for consumers. These programs encourage consumers to use home chargers for their EVs during off-peak hours. The value for utilities is clear: beyond enhancing community engagement and supporting sustainable living, they gain valuable insights into charging patterns and behaviors to optimize grid operations and strategically plan infrastructure investments.

    Customers, though, likely do not understand the impact of everyone trying to charge their EVs at the same time. Utilities need to present them with a value proposition: home charging incentive programs offer convenience at reduced rates, with rebates on equipment that can significantly lower the TCO of an EV. It’s a compelling value proposition that can be easily obscured and not yield desired results, if utilities do not thoughtfully communicate with customers about the offerings. Sticking points can include:

    • Home charging maintenance and repairs: Customers frequently have questions and reservations about the effort and costs required to maintain home charging stations. A knowledge-sharing session during a home visit with an electrician can explain all maintenance requirements, and comprehensive training should be provided for ongoing support (such as user manuals with phone numbers and email addresses, along with reminders shared continuously in the form of digital micro-learnings).

    • Installation costs and building permitting restrictions: These components of putting in a home charging station can feel daunting to customers. Customer surveys, or focus groups, can pinpoint the desired charging preferences and the home charging experience, and community education efforts can help inform customers on how they can seamlessly overcome these perceived obstacles. Furthermore, utilities can develop specific engagement plans with local gubernatorial and related bodies to align on any specific installation protocols to get ahead of building permit challenges for customers.

    • Charging time inflexibility and wariness of EVs: For customers who need further convincing, an easy-to-consume cost-benefit analysis can demonstrate the long-term financial and environmental benefits of the incentives program, along with EVs in general, and a targeted communications campaign can explain the potential money savings to drivers.

    • Aversion to being an early adopter in a new incentives program: Given that utilities are asking customers to do something brand new, early engagement can help the organization better understand the concerns of stakeholders and inform effective, ongoing ways to involve customers in planning and decision-making, which can in turn meaningfully connect EV adoption to customers’ everyday lives.
    EV adoption
    3

    Case #3

    Employee workplace charging program

    This perk for workers could help boost retention and satisfaction, although the requirements for installing and maintaining the infrastructure must be accounted for.

    A utility may want to provide charging stations for their employees while they are at work to show its own commitment to EV adoption and support achievement of its own sustainability goals. The value propositions center not only on providing convenience for employees and offering them a new workplace benefit that may help with employee satisfaction, but also government incentives that can make installing EV infrastructure financially advantageous for the business. This also offers value for organizations that have net-zero carbon goals or for employees concerned with their company’s environmentally conscious practices. Key challenges and how they can be mitigated include:

    • Significant initial installation costs for charging infrastructure: Concerns about budget allocation and return on investment may seem prohibitive to company leadership. A cost-benefit analysis can evaluate the expenses in relation to the revenue generated from employee payments, as well as work to quantify potential other benefits, including stable or increased employee satisfaction. Leadership alignment will be an essential part of embarking on this program so that all key leaders across the organization are committed to this offering.

    • Perceptions of unfairness among employee groups: Not all workers have access to EVs, and those without an EV may resent or disparage an initiative that doesn’t benefit them. A stakeholder analysis helps organizations better understand what types of vehicles employees drive and how many are EVs; it can also support the company’s ability to mitigate negative reactions from employees who might not directly benefit from employee charging offerings.

    • Limited parking spaces or logistical challenges: A change impact assessment will help determine how many spaces should be equipped with charging infrastructure, and how that will affect the organization and drivers. Further, an initial stakeholder analysis can support the organization’s ability to identify all stakeholders (internal and external) that will need to be involved to overcome parking and logistical challenges. By identifying these groups early on in the program, the company can bring the right functional areas together to discuss and design solutions that will work within any existing constraints.

    • Operational burdens from charging maintenance and management: To support an employee charging incentive program, an organization needs to understand the impact on operations and groups who maintain the physical office locations. The organization may lack the right people or not have enough of them. An organizational analysis to determine which roles and skills do exist and where there may be gaps will pinpoint potential obstacles. And so will working with relevant groups to determine what they will need to be ready for the charging program, as part of a business readiness assessment. Organizations can get ahead of these challenges by upskilling existing team members, hiring new staff as necessary, and providing any other resources to relevant groups.

    Summary 

    Utilities must thoroughly explore and understand the people-related transformation needs associated with the transition to electric vehicles (EVs). A well-structured strategy for driving change will not only address the unique challenges faced by various stakeholders but also enhance the overall adoption of EV initiatives. By effectively communicating the value of these changes and providing tailored support, utilities can ensure a smoother transition, mitigate resistance, and foster a culture of acceptance and enthusiasm around EV integration. Ultimately, embracing the need to support experiences related to change will empower utilities to navigate this complex landscape successfully and drive progress.

    About this article

    Authors

    Related topics
    Energy and resources
    Consulting
    Transformation Realized
    Sustainability
    eMobility

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