BEVScape, changing the landscape of EV sales

client

BMW

solution

IPAD SYNCED Interactive screen

Due to how relatively new electric vehicles (EVs) are in the Indian market, consumers aren’t confident in the new tech and on account of salespeople's efficiency on emphasizing the strong points of EVs it’s hard to convince prospective buyers. To change that, we at Ink in Caps were tasked by BMW to develop a solution that would get the common Indian consumer to view EVs more favourably for both environmental reasons and also due to the new EVs BMW had launched in India. BMW’s new corporate identity (CI) norms made it so they were moving away from the formal suit and tie unfriendly atmosphere to a more chill vibe that involved a lounge space, bar chairs, and casually dressed salespeople to keep the client at ease. To go along with this trendy revolution, BMW believed they should have the tech to match.

Objectives

BMW was coming up with new dealership designs, and they wished to give their customers a little more than what they just came for, using tech to craft an unforgettable experience that would set BMW apart from their competitors. The brief was open-ended; they requested we specifically focus on the EV space, as Indian consumers are yet to be properly educated on the benefits of EVs. Our role was to figure out how we could add a technological element to this new and improved BMW showroom while simultaneously creating an engaging experience that would educate the layman on the benefits of owning an EV.

Execution

To complete this request, we first did some on-field research as customers in BMW dealerships to understand the pain points from a customer perspective, following which we understood the perspective of a salesperson trying to figure out why selling an EV isn’t intuitive. We concluded that considering EVs are a fairly new product, no one knows how to sell them to an Indian market focused more on fuel efficiency than anything else. We brainstormed ideas to pitch them before settling on a simple premise: EVs may be costlier than normal cars, but electricity is cheaper than petrol. To depict this engagingly, we crafted an interactive experience that would engage customers while also educating them on the benefits of an EV over petrol and diesel counterparts. Once visitors tap on the activation button, it will display the three EVs to them. Once they choose an EV they wish to learn about, five options are given to them: savings with an EV, how to charge your EV, relax—we care, testimonials, and contribute to zero emissions. These categories expand on how much customers can save a year by investing in an EV for instance if an individual were to, on average, drive 8,000 km annually, one who owns an EV would spend INR 64,000 on fuel, compared to INR 3.2 lakhs for a petrol vehicle and INR 2.56 lakhs for diesel counterparts.It also offers insightful visualizations that highlight the reduced carbon footprint of owning an EV.

Additionally, it provides a detailed overview of public EV charging stations across various Indian cities, making it easier for users to plan their journeys efficiently. Lastly, a personalised calculator was designed to make the process of explaining financing easier for salespeople.

Technically Sight

The entire platform was created on Unity using assets and animations that our in-house team developed. The logical flow of content was added to the Figma wireframe, after which animations were added to it by animating each slide from scratch using the existing animations as a reference. To help customers visualise how much more efficient EVs are, BEVScape allowed them to calculate how many times they would need to charge it based on their daily mileage; it would then calculate that information using a basic calculator algorithm and present it to them with animations to make it look more engaging and dynamic. They also included beautifully designed animations and were available to view in a variety of formats, such as an interactive screen, a screen controlled by an iPad, an iPad-only version, and a micro website that we developed from scratch for phones.

Challenges

Our team had to overcome design and development-related hurdles. BEVScape possessed heavy, detailed animation that, while looking stunning, was a great task to optimise for the multiple formats the platform was meant to be available on, especially the micro-website, this led to both the dev and design team to come up with some out of the box ideas. Layering the pre-existing animations was not possible for the micro-website, so those had to be created again from scratch. Conceptualisation took a majority of our time, which left us with about a month to complete the platform. The micro website for the phone involved tinkering while using Figma to see how the site would look on the phone. Our tech team had their work cut out for them, due to the long designing process that took up most of the timeline of the project the tech team only had about a weekend to pull everything together.

Result

BEVScape transformed from a project meant to be an experience in a singular dealership to a BMW sub-brand that is to be deployed in over 20 showrooms in India and revealed at the Auto Expo alongside their new cars. Originally it was not meant to be showcased at the Auto Expo, Recognizing its potential impact, the President of BMW India decided to launch it with a vision to evolve it into a dynamic website. The goal is to assist consumers in making informed decisions about EV ownership, helping them find the best fit for their needs.