Car website Vroom launches the EV checker, an online tool that aims to guide prospective car buyers in their choice of car, particularly electromobility. The device is online today via vroom-ev.com.
By entering some initial data like your location, the kilometers driven per year, whether you’ll use highways, city streets, or local roads mostly, the tool makes a suggestion of what electric car could suit you best among the ones offered by the companies that advertise on the website.
Vroom is a car website that lives mainly off a classified ads portal to which some automotive product content is linked to make the website more attractive to users. Until two years ago, Vroom was owned by Mediahuis, the group publishing newspapers such as De Standaard, Het Nieuwsblad, and Het Belang van Limburg.
Vroom is now owned by Mobly, an organization that wants to offer a mobility platform via ‘mobility as a service’. This also includes public transport, shared mobility, and insurance. It is, therefore, hardly a coincidence that the insurance company Baloise is one of the essential financiers behind Mobly and, by extension, Vroom.
WLTP driving range
In that sense, the EV checker is more of a marketing tool, and that is also apparent from the way the online advisor works. Users have to enter a little data in advance, which mainly focuses on the number of kilometers driven annually, the type of roads mainly used, and whether they are looking for a city car, a family car, or a luxury vehicle.
The tool also takes the postal code into account. Based on this input, the user gets some suggestions for electric vehicles. The latter are mainly determined based on their official driving range based on WLTP data.
Too few parameters
However, objectively and thoroughly informing consumers about their choice of motorization is somewhat more complex than the WLTP driving range. First of all, this measurement method is increasingly under fire because the WLTP figures – depending on the model – deviate considerably from actual measurements. Outside temperature, but mostly driver’s behavior can influence the real figures considerably.
On the other hand, the EV checker does not consider the home charging options of the consumer. The only location-specific parameter is the zip code, and that is very vague when it comes to assessing whether the user can charge his electric vehicle.
There is also no question whether the user has a private car park or a sufficiently powerful electricity connection. These are precisely the elements crucial to making EV use a possible and, above all, pleasant experience.
