The Next Frontier of Electrification: Turning BEV Momentum Into a Home Energy Market

For years, the story of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) has centered on the car itself. Faster charging, longer range, better batteries. But a new frontier is emerging in the consideration of transitioning to electric: the home.

New data from Escalent’s EVForward^® 2025 Home Energy Solutions DeepDive study reveal that the most consequential opportunities now sit at the intersection of the driveway and the electrical panel.

Consumers are ready to integrate vehicles, energy management and energy storage into one ecosystem. Automobile manufacturers and utility companies, in particular, stand to gain if the transition from vehicle electrification to household electrification is deliberately and collaboratively managed.

A Market Ready to Be Activated

Our study identified two consumer groups that will shape early growth:

EV Intenders

EV Intenders are shoppers who are more than fifteen times more likely to purchase a BEV than the average new-car buyer, according to our EVForward research, and who are actively considering how a vehicle fits within their household energy system.

• 84% would explore ways to reshape home energy use once they own a BEV.
• 71% would build a broader home energy ecosystem around that vehicle.
• 93% prefer to monitor and manage household energy directly.

Price-Sensitive Consumers

Price-sensitive consumers make up the 43% of buyers who regularly worry about electricity costs and seek tools to stabilize bills. These households show higher-than-average interest in rooftop solar, home batteries and energy management systems.

Together, these segments represent an addressable market that is ready within the next two years, not the next decade.

BEV Ownership Increasingly Blurs the Lines Between Auto and Energy Companies

Consumers already extend nearly equal trust to both their primary vehicle brand (67%) and their utility (65%) to help them manage their home energy use. Yet fewer than 11% would currently purchase a home energy product from their automaker.

That disconnect is not about credibility, but awareness and category ownership. Utilities dominate the mental space of “home energy,” while automakers, predictably, dominate “mobility.”

Closing that gap requires reframing the BEV as the nucleus of household energy. When the vehicle becomes consumers’ entry point to energy optimization, the automaker evolves from OEM to energy platform provider.

Our study shows BEV ownership itself increases appetite for technologies such as home batteries, smart electrical panels and backup power systems.

Economics, Not Emergencies, Drive Home Energy Solution Adoption

Conventional wisdom holds that concerns about power outages drive investment in home energy systems. Our data suggest otherwise. Few consumers experience outages frequent or long enough to change their purchasing behavior of home energy technologies.

In contrast, price-sensitive households—nearly half the population—more often cite rising electricity costs and are more interested in exploring new home energy technologies than the average new-car buyer. They want predictability.

This insight reframes the marketing narrative. Affordability and control, not energy resilience, should anchor communication and offer design. Utilities and OEMs that can quantify monthly savings, automate rate optimization and make billing transparent will capture this audience.

The Installation Divide

People express curiosity about home energy solutions—which include smart thermostats, whole-home backup generators, rooftop solar, home battery backup, home energy management systems, and grid-interactive water heaters—but their ability to execute on this curiosity is uneven. Across all the aforementioned home energy solutions:

• 22%–34% of consumers say they are interested in and can install such technologies.
• 19%–34% are interested but cannot proceed due to financial or informational barriers.
  • 26%–41% cite inefficient funds.
  • 28%–43% cite lack of understanding.
  • 20%–32% cite uncertainty about next steps.

This suggests the opportunity is not in inventing new products, but in removing buying friction via simplified purchase paths, turnkey installation, transparent education and accessible financing.

Automakers and Utilities: A Match Made in Heaven

Utilities remain the natural front door for home energy decisions, while automakers own the emotional connection and the physical interface (vehicles) with consumers. However, each lacks what the other commands: utilities have infrastructure but limited consumer engagement, automakers have customer intimacy but limited regulatory reach.

The most effective path forward for customer adoption is structured collaboration rather than parallel competition. Practical partnership models include:

• Co-branded home energy programs at dealerships
• Shared customer data to coordinate demand-response participation
• Joint financing that combines on-bill recovery with automotive loan structures
• Unified digital experiences where consumers manage vehicle + home energy

This approach transforms two separate industries into complementary channels within a single customer journey.

Designing Offers Around Real Consumer Behavior

Our findings underscore that the next generation of electrification products must be designed around actual consumer behavior—not assumptions—that illuminate how people think, choose and act.

Here are practical ways professionals across both the automotive and mobility and energy industries can apply these insights to design and deliver offers that resonate with real consumer behavior:

• Bundle by life event, not technology. Consumers engage when purchasing or servicing a BEV or remodeling a home—not when abstract incentives appear online.
• Simplify the narrative. Replace technical acronyms such as “V2G” with concrete outcomes such as lower bills, faster charging and reliable power.
• Reduce perceived complexity. Invest in installer networks and digital tools that guide consumers through design, permitting and financing.
• Guarantee the battery. Bidirectional charging confidence depends on clear warranties tied to use cycles.
• Quantify savings. Publish side-by-side monthly bill scenarios using local rate data to illustrate the price-saving impact when purchasing a BEV and home energy solution. Transparency builds trust.
• Educate post-sale. Follow-up communication explaining energy performance and infrastructure maintenance closes the loop between curiosity or concern and advocacy.

Automakers and Utilities Uniting in the Integrated Home Energy Solutions Ecosystem of the Future

Our EVForward 2025 Home Energy Solutions DeepDive makes one point unmistakable: electrification is no longer confined to vehicles. It is becoming an organizing principle for household economics.

Consumers trust both automakers and utilities but expect each to stay within its traditional lane. The organizations that blur that line—responsibly, transparently and at scale—will own the next era of consumer loyalty.

This presents an opening for automakers and utilities to expand the definition of BEV value and treat home energy integration as a core benefit of BEV ownership, not an accessory. In so doing, the meaningful success metric will no longer be BEV penetration alone, but household participation in this integrated home energy ecosystem.

The opportunity is measurable, the segments are identifiable and the technology is deployable. The question is which enterprises will move first to turn electric mobility into full-spectrum energy leadership.

If you’re interested in learning more about our EVForward Home Energy Solutions DeepDive report, send us a note by completing the form below.

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About Our EVForward^® 2025 Home Energy Solutions DeepDive Study

This EVForward^® DeepDive was conducted among a national sample of 1,068 respondents—with 112 EV Owner, 268 EV Intender, 305 EV Open and 383 EV Resistant respondents as identified by Escalent’s algorithm—from April 24 to May 7, 2025. These respondents are a subset of the EVForward database, a global sample of more than 50,000 new-vehicle buyers age 18 to 80, weighted by age, gender, race and location to match the demographics of the new-vehicle buyer population and by vehicle segment to match current vehicle sales. The sample for this research comes from an opt-in online panel. As such, any reported margins of error or significance tests are estimated and rely on the same statistical assumptions as data collected from a random probability sample. Escalent will supply the exact wording of any survey question upon request.