- Apr 16, 2026
- 7
- 8
- Awards
- 2
- First Name
- Emily
Welcome to the REV. A weekly briefing on what the Auto industry can learn about customer experience from millions of Google reviews. Every Thursday, we Rank, Explore & Visualize automotive reputation & sentiment data.
This week, we pulled and analyzed review data across roughly 18,000 dealerships to share what's coming up in the Q1 EV numbers. The picture is more complicated than I expected, and I'd value the operator read on it.
A year ago, I wrote about EV staff knowledge as the standout friction point in the dealership experience. EV buyers in Q1 2025 were 34% more likely than gas buyers to flag knowledge as a problem in their reviews. The working assumption was straightforward: as OEMs invested in EV-specific training and dealers got more reps with the product, that gap would close.
The Q1 2026 data isn't going there.
Report: 2026 Voice of the Customer Report
Read online. Subscribe to REV
Gas and hybrid land within 0.2 points of each other. EV sits 9% above both.
The pattern isn't isolated to communication. EV buyers report more friction on the service side across multiple topics:
A couple of things worth flagging that complicate the easy read:
The friction isn't following EV buyers into the showroom. EV sales department negativity is actually the lowest of the three (27.2%, vs. 29.4% gas and 33.0% hybrid). Whatever's happening, it's post-sale.
Knowledge complaints for EV buyers have gotten worse, not better — which is the part I want to dig into.
Q1 2026 says that didn't happen. Two things moved in the wrong direction at the same time:
The data doesn't tell me why. What it does suggest is that this isn't a "give the team a refresher" problem.
Katelyn Gilmore, GM at Paradise Chevrolet, has been making this point on her podcast appearances, that EV service can't run on the same playbook as ICE. Different vehicle, different conversation, different workflow. When she describes a customer getting routed through five people with five different answers, the issue isn't what any one of them knows. It's that the process around them was built for a different product. That framing lines up with what the Q1 data is showing.
One read: knowledge and communication complaints aren't two separate problems. They might be symptoms of EV customers moving through a dealership workflow built for a different powertrain, where the advisor in front of them doesn't have the right information, and the next person they get passed to probably doesn't either.
If that's right, the friction won't close with more training. It'll close when the workflow underneath it changes. And the Q1 data doesn't show that happening yet.
A quick methodological note: this is Q1 2025 vs Q1 2026, so the comparison is quarter-over-quarter rather than full-year. Sample sizes are quarterly, but the relative gaps moved enough on both topics that I don't think it's seasonal noise.
Specifically curious about:
Thanks for reading!
See you next week - Emily, Marketing @Widewail
This week, we pulled and analyzed review data across roughly 18,000 dealerships to share what's coming up in the Q1 EV numbers. The picture is more complicated than I expected, and I'd value the operator read on it.
A year ago, I wrote about EV staff knowledge as the standout friction point in the dealership experience. EV buyers in Q1 2025 were 34% more likely than gas buyers to flag knowledge as a problem in their reviews. The working assumption was straightforward: as OEMs invested in EV-specific training and dealers got more reps with the product, that gap would close.
The Q1 2026 data isn't going there.
Report: 2026 Voice of the Customer Report
Read online. Subscribe to REV
RANK: Communication Complaints by EV Customers Run Higher Than Gas and Hybrid
Looking at Q1 2026 across EV, gas, and hybrid buyers, EV is the outlier on the service side. The clearest signal is communication — 61% of negative reviews from EV buyers flag it as an issue, compared to about 52% for both gas and hybrid.Gas and hybrid land within 0.2 points of each other. EV sits 9% above both.
The pattern isn't isolated to communication. EV buyers report more friction on the service side across multiple topics:
A couple of things worth flagging that complicate the easy read:
The friction isn't following EV buyers into the showroom. EV sales department negativity is actually the lowest of the three (27.2%, vs. 29.4% gas and 33.0% hybrid). Whatever's happening, it's post-sale.
Knowledge complaints for EV buyers have gotten worse, not better — which is the part I want to dig into.
EXPLORE: Training Was Supposed to Close the Powertrain Experience Gap
A year ago, the obvious story was knowledge: EV buyers come in informed, dealership staff don't yet have the reps, gap shows up in reviews. Train the team, close the gap.Q1 2026 says that didn't happen. Two things moved in the wrong direction at the same time:
- Knowledge complaints widened, not narrowed. EV negative knowledge mentions grew from 4.7% in Q1 2025 to 6.4% in Q1 2026. Gas held essentially flat. The relative gap between EV and gas widened from +34% to +86%.
- Communication flipped from a non-issue to a major one. In Q1 2025, EV buyers actually complained about communication slightly less than gas buyers. In Q1 2026, they're complaining 17.7% more.
The data doesn't tell me why. What it does suggest is that this isn't a "give the team a refresher" problem.
Katelyn Gilmore, GM at Paradise Chevrolet, has been making this point on her podcast appearances, that EV service can't run on the same playbook as ICE. Different vehicle, different conversation, different workflow. When she describes a customer getting routed through five people with five different answers, the issue isn't what any one of them knows. It's that the process around them was built for a different product. That framing lines up with what the Q1 data is showing.
One read: knowledge and communication complaints aren't two separate problems. They might be symptoms of EV customers moving through a dealership workflow built for a different powertrain, where the advisor in front of them doesn't have the right information, and the next person they get passed to probably doesn't either.
If that's right, the friction won't close with more training. It'll close when the workflow underneath it changes. And the Q1 data doesn't show that happening yet.
A quick methodological note: this is Q1 2025 vs Q1 2026, so the comparison is quarter-over-quarter rather than full-year. Sample sizes are quarterly, but the relative gaps moved enough on both topics that I don't think it's seasonal noise.
VISUALIZE: Two Topics, Same Direction
Year-over-year change in EV vs. gas negative mention rates. Both knowledge and communication moved against EV between Q1 2025 and Q1 2026. Gas barely moved on either topic. EV moved meaningfully worse on both. The communication panel is the one that surprised me most. EV went from sitting below gas in Q1 2025 to running well above it a year later.Where I'd value the operator perspective:
For anyone running EV service ops, does the workflow read match what you're seeing on the ground, or is something else going on that the data isn't catching?Specifically curious about:
- If you've made operational changes to how EV customers move through the service drive (separate from training), what's actually moved the needle?
- For anyone working with OEM EV training programs, are you seeing the training translate to the customer experience, or hitting product knowledge without touching the handoffs?
- Anyone running EV service through a separate workflow or dedicated advisor team — is that approach producing different review outcomes?
Thanks for reading!
See you next week - Emily, Marketing @Widewail
