This Is How GM Will Convince You to Buy an Electric Car
GM has launched a new educational tool called EV Live to answer customers’ questions about electric vehicles and how to charge them.The site is open to all—you can ask about charging, range, and even non-GM products, though they’re happy to discuss GM vehicles and technology.On evlive.gm.com, users can schedule a live session with a real person.
Other carmakers have various means of educating and informing potential electric-vehicle buyers about EVs, but none has gone as far as General Motors’ new EV Live. Through an online web address, evlive.gm.com, anyone who wants to can schedule a meeting with a living, breathing, walking, and talking product expert who can answer just about any question or concern you may have about electric cars.
The experts can also literally take you inside any of GM’s various electric-car offerings, from a Bolt EUV to a BrightDrop commercial vehicle, all from a space inside GM’s Tech Center in Warren, Michigan. EV charging questions are open for discussion, too.
“Anybody can access it—it’s always available, and it’s free,” said Hoss Hossani, GM’s vice president of the EV Ecosystem. “It’s not just for GM customers. It’s really for anybody. It’s basically an interactive education platform.”
A potential customer uses EVLive online on a tablet.
GM
And the answers cover the whole of the EV universe, delivered by a real person.
“There’s a lot of content on the site,” Hossani said. “The ideal experience is to actually speak with one of our EV Live specialists that are real humans. These aren’t avatars or bots or ChatGPT AI. Behind the scenes is a real human being. You can see them on video (they can’t see you), and you can ask them literally any question you have about EVs: charging, range, batteries, longevity, sustainability, recyclability, cost of ownership. They’re really there to help demystify EVs for the masses. And for folks who are on the fence, or maybe they don’t believe in EVs altogether. So that’s the gist of what EV Live is all about.”
We Put It to the Test
I got to try it out. A technician in a big hotel meeting room in Los Angeles showed me the EV Live experience on a large TV screen. Most people will be watching this on their phones, though you can connect to it on any internet-capable device. Immediately I was whisked virtually into a studio in wonderful Warren, Michigan, and there was a confident and friendly EV expert. She showed me around the EUV Bolt, pointing out a few features.
I asked a question I’ve heard many times: How can I charge an EV if I live in an apartment?
“Oh gosh, we have lots of solutions,” said Jen, the EV specialist on the screen.
Jen told me that she herself wants to buy a Chevy Bolt EUV. In her apartment complex there is a charging hub for residents, with three charging cables available, she said, and that at some workplaces there are charging outlets that allow EV owners to charge while at work. And if that doesn’t do it for you, there are more fast chargers being built all the time. For public chargers, you can get an EVGo credit of $500, Jen said.
I asked about BrightDrop, GM’s commercial-electric vehicle. Jen recommended I set up a tour with Trish, the EV Live BrightDrop specialist.
GM offers a lot of EVs, with more coming soon.
GM
There are separate GM EV Live studios for Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick, and GMC.
“We have this very seamless handoff between the EV Live studio and, for example, the Chevy studio if you want to find out more about the Equinox that’s coming out—whether it’s a gasoline Equinox, or the electric Equinox—this studio is meant to be focused on that education, around EVs.”
EV Live is not the only way for customers to become educated about GM EVs.
“Every General Motors customer, if they have a Chevrolet, they have a myChevrolet app. If they’ve got a GMC, they have a myGMC app,” said Hossani. “People are initiating a live call or looking to go deeper than the information we’re providing on the website, which is the whole point, to allow us to have deeper conversations that are more personalized to your individual use case.”
Why this? Why now? Last year 6 percent of vehicles sold in the U.S. were electric. That could be a tipping point.
“Based on what we’ve seen in China and in Europe, once you hit that 5 or 6 percent of new-vehicle sales being EVs, you start to see an acceleration,” said Hossani. “So the next five years, we’ll see it become a tipping point. I see a lot more people getting into electric over the next five years than we did over the last 10.”
Mark Vaughn grew up in a Ford family and spent many hours holding a trouble light over a straight-six miraculously fed by a single-barrel carburetor while his father cursed Ford, all its products and everyone who ever worked there. This was his introduction to objective automotive criticism. He started writing for City News Service in Los Angeles, then moved to Europe and became editor of a car magazine called, creatively, Auto. He decided Auto should cover Formula 1, sports prototypes and touring cars—no one stopped him! From there he interviewed with Autoweek at the 1989 Frankfurt motor show and has been with us ever since.
