I read this morning, that automotive marketing data company, Polk posted an article on their blog, in December, a listing of the top fifteen and bottom fifteen Designated Marketing Areas (DMAs), in the U.S., for hybrid and electric vehicle adoption. The data was based through the first ten months of 2012.
The first thing I had to do was understand what a DMA is. DMAs seem to have started in the television industry by Nielsen Media Research as a way to break up the United States into markets that receive the same or similar television broadcasts. Now, these DMAs are used by many types of sales companies to determine sales territories. (see map of DMAs below)
I was NOT surprised that the west coast dominated the list of the top fifteen. Number one was the San Francisco DMA with almost 10% of all vehicle registrations being hybrids or EVs. The combination of just two of these DMAs, San Francisco and Los Angeles, accounted for a quarter of all electric vehicle sales, over the time period covered by the study. The top fifteen DMAs had almost 30% of all hybrid registrations in the U.S., although those same DMAs only account for 12.5% of new vehicle registrations.
The shock and shame set in when I saw the list of the bottom fifteen DMAs for adoption. Texas had five of them. Louisiana, next door to my home state, had four and Oklahoma, another neighboring state had the lowest DMA for hybrid/EV penetration in the Tulsa DMA. Rounding out the bottom fifteen were DMAs in Montana, Ohio, Mississippi, Montana and the balance of the U.S.
What’s up with that???
I know Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Mississippi are dominant in the oil industry, but we also have mild winters, which is conducive to EV range. Fortunately, the largest DMAs of Texas, based on population, were not in the bottom fifteen. (whew!)
As a nation, why are we so different, when it comes to adopting this technology? Why does it always appear that Californians are more ecologically aware than the rest of the country? Cable TV, satellite TV/radio and the internet, provide us all with basically the same inputs into our knowledge base.
Having grown up in Houston, and travelled much of its Gulf coast, I’ve seen air and water pollution up close and personal. You would think this alone would drive adoption of cleaner technologies in my state.
I have questions but no answers this morning.
