Charging Into the Electric Future

Electric vehicles symbolize a global aspiration: a solution to the pollutive, fossil-fueled transportation of yesterday. Our client’s ambitious electrification strategy reflects their critical investment in a renewable energy future and an intention to lead the charge. Yet, making this emerging technology successful requires deeply understanding and adapting to emergent consumer and cultural needs to generate value.

We partnered with our friends at a renowned design consultancy to lead their team and our client through discovery, design, and strategy toward a powerful vision for electrifying American mobility with confidence and clarity.

Blumline developed a customized and targeted approach to inspiration and needfinding, leading a two-day sprint with an international team of stakeholders from diverse business units. Leaders across the company - who often work in organizational silos - engaged in the rare opportunity to learn, bond, share, and reflect on their processes while integrating new, meaningful insights.

With immersive storytelling, and dynamic ideation methods, we explored American EV needs, defined target customers, and crystallized ambitions, enablers, and objectives. During this learning and alignment journey, we unpacked the shifting landscape of electric vehicle ownership, and thoughtfully challenged sticky assumptions.

While we generated a comprehensive ideas library of powerful solutions – anchored in essential insights and consumer needs – we ultimately distilled our focus into 4 key opportunities. So pleased was our client that they immediately requested to extend this program.

We rapidly prototyped our key service concepts and brought them in the field to test with consumers. Our prototypes helped us uncover concerns and barriers with services leveraging data as currency; this helped us define boundaries to protect consumer privacy interests. The general lack of awareness – even by EV owners themselves – of the capabilities of this technology revealed a need for education and literacy: not just for EV owners, but for the general public. For example, remote temperature regulation is possible in an EV, which can enable dogs, or even children, to safely remain in the car, with parents able to remotely monitor and communicate with them via video and audio. Culturally, however, this behavior is perceived as negligent and dangerous, even though technology now renders this safe and convenient enough to dash out the car for a quick errand.

Our clear takeaways and prioritized recommendations enabled this automaker to execute on our roadmap, introduce critical charging solutions, and innovative new services leveraging their unique capabilities, brand equity, and new electric vehicle technology. Through this unique partnership, we empowered this client with design thinking and service design methods to guide their road forward.


Breathing life into bold opportunities for our clients, facilitating clarity, and inspiring confidence in exciting, new directions — this is what Blumline does best.