Brooke Canova was nervous after she and her husband bought their Ford F-150 Lightning, the electric version of the enormous, classic pickup truck.
She wasn’t worried about running out of charge and being stranded on the road, or whether the truck would have enough oomph to merge onto a speeding highway. Canova, a health and physical education teacher and mother of a preteen son in Charlottesville, Virginia, fretted about the vehicle’s size.
“I’m not going to be able to drive this!” she recalled thinking. “It’s too big. How will I park it?”
The purchase was a sort of compromise: Her husband had long wanted a truck, and she finally agreed to go along if it was electric.
As it turns out, the vehicle has enough cameras to help Canova manage its girth. It can parallel park itself in self-driving mode. What’s more, she can drive to Richmond, Virginia, and back on one 320-mile charge. And since her rooftop is equipped with 27 solar panels, it costs her family less than $6 a month to charge the truck at home.
“It has been a lot of fun,” Canova said, especially as a woman driving a big truck that’s electric to boot. “It’s sort of a conversation piece. People are like, ‘Wow, look at you in that thing!’”
That’s just the reaction Generation180 is hoping to provoke. Headquartered in Charlottesville, the nonprofit has recruited Canova and some 7,000 other “EV ambassadors” nationwide to spread the word about their experiences online and in person.
While the group supports policies to speed the clean energy transition, its core mission is to “inspire and equip” people to adopt clean energy in their own lives, said Executive Director Stuart Gardner. EV ownership, he said, is a vital “stepping stone” to other clean energy actions.
Gardner’s team has long encouraged people to drive electric. But last year, their research found remarkable gender disparities among the “EV curious” in Virginia. Women said helping the environment was a top reason to drive electric, tied with saving money. Yet just a quarter of women had heard “a lot” about EVs, compared to nearly half of men.
The Virginia survey was backed up by other studies, which showed just 30% of women had some familiarity with EVs, compared to over half of men. In all, more than 70% of EV owners are men.
The initiative is focused on reaching women in the suburbs — auto-dependent areas where electric vehicles are ideal for short trips and where many new-car buyers live, said Gardner. Suburbs also “tend to be evenly split Democrat and Republican,” he said, “So, they [offer] a great opportunity to say, ‘Hey, EVs are for everyone.’”
At the crux of the effort is the belief that people in general and women in particular are skeptical of the increasingly polarized information landscape and are looking for reliable messengers.
The women EV owners Generation180 has identified did a lot of research first, said Shakaya Cooper, program manager with the group. Much of that homework involved talking to friends and colleagues, she said. “They’re intentional in their research, and they are going to people that are trusted sources, for sure.”
How EV perks — like “frunks” — can win over consumers
That’s where volunteer ambassadors like Canova come in. Last fall, she brought her F-150 Lightning to a car show tied to a downtown Charlottesville event, where various EV makes and models were on display. A graduate of the University of Virginia, she’s also attended college basketball games with a suite of other women to talk about going electric.
“It was just a really nice vibe — talking to people about their cars, what they like, what they don’t like,” she said, having “those really approachable conversations between moms.”
Beyond official functions organized by Generation180, Canova and her family undoubtedly pique EV curiosity in their community by milking all the Lightning’s bells and whistles in their daily lives.
One popular feature is the “frunk,” a trunk in the front where a combustion engine would normally go. With a drainage hole and light insulation, it can act as a cooler. Plus, the entire vehicle is equipped with outlets — making it perfect for tailgating.
“One of our favorite things to do with the truck is tailgate because we plug in an [electric] pellet grill and a griddle and a TV — all into the truck bed, which has been a lot of fun,” she said. “We tailgated for a Little League game the other day; the whole team was there.”
