Benchmarking the Vehicle-Shopping Journey: Where ICE and EV Brands Win or Lose Buyers

A shopper researching a combustion SUV and a shopper researching its electric equivalent are using the same dealer website, the same configurator, the same financing calculator - and asking completely different questions the site was never built to answer.

Most automotive brands now sell ICE and EV models from the same digital platform, often reusing the same configurator and finance tools across both, on the assumption that a car-buying journey is a car-buying journey. It isn't. An EV shopper is carrying questions an ICE shopper never had to resolve online - range, charging, incentives, battery life - while an ICE shopper is moving through a decision they've made a dozen times before and just wants a fast path to a price and a test drive.

Treat both journeys as one, and you underserve EV shoppers at exactly the research-heavy stage where trust gets built, while burying ICE shoppers in content that isn't relevant to them. The brand that benchmarks these two journeys separately - and against each segment's real competitors - is the one that knows exactly where it's winning buyers and where it's quietly losing them.

An EV shopper isn't further along the same road an ICE shopper is on. It's a different road, with its own questions.

One Website, Two Very Different Buyers

An ICE shopper already knows what “32 MPG” means and mostly wants trim, price, and dealer proximity. An EV shopper is often asking questions the combustion journey never needed to answer: what's the real range in winter, where do I charge on a road trip, which incentives actually apply to me, and what happens to the battery in eight years. If your site's UX - navigation, content depth, calculators - is a single template inherited from the ICE era, EV shoppers hit a wall of missing answers exactly when they need the most reassurance.

The reverse problem is just as real: ICE shoppers forced through EV-oriented content and messaging that doesn't apply to them experience it as noise between them and the price they came for.

The Three Moments Where Vehicle Buyers Decide - and Where ICE and EV Diverge

Whichever powertrain someone is shopping, the decision to buy from you - or take the same questions to a competitor - gets made at one of three moments:

Research & Configuration

ICE buyers configure trim and colour quickly because the mental model is familiar. EV buyers need range, charging, and incentive context built into the configurator itself, or they leave to research it elsewhere - often on a competitor's clearer page.

Financing & Incentives

EV buyers face a genuinely more complex financing picture - federal, state, and local incentives, tax credit eligibility, lease-versus-buy depreciation - that a generic ICE finance calculator doesn't surface, creating hesitation exactly where a clear number would close the sale.

Test Drive & Dealer Handoff

Booking a test drive is mechanically the same for both, but EV shoppers frequently want reassurance first - working chargers on site, staff who can answer range questions - before committing to a visit. A generic “Book a Test Drive” button doesn't address that hesitation.

“An EV shopper isn't more hesitant because they like the product less. They're more hesitant because your website is answering an ICE buyer's questions to someone who has entirely different ones.”

Where Vehicle Brands Lose Buyers - ICE and EV Alike

Across our benchmarking studies of automotive brands selling both powertrains, the same friction points appear again and again:

Generic range and charging claims with no context. A single “300 miles” spec-sheet number with no real-world or seasonal context, and no way to map it to the buyer's own commute, reads as marketing rather than information an EV shopper can actually trust.
Incentive calculators that assume one tax situation. Federal, state, and local EV incentives vary enormously. A calculator that doesn't ask the right two or three questions gives a number shoppers can't rely on - so they go find a clearer one from a competitor.
Configurators that treat ICE and EV trims identically. Reusing the same configuration flow for a combustion trim and an electric trim buries the questions each buyer actually has under options that don't apply to them.
No visible answer to “what happens to the battery.” EV shoppers routinely hesitate over battery degradation and warranty terms. Sites that don't surface this clearly leave shoppers to guess - or ask a competitor's chatbot instead.
Dealer locators with no EV-specific detail. Buyers who need to know a dealer has working chargers and EV-trained staff before booking a visit abandon when the locator can't tell them that.

Finding Where Your ICE and EV Journeys Actually Diverge

You don't need to guess where each segment is struggling. The gap becomes visible the moment you benchmark the two journeys separately, with direct observation of real shoppers in each:

Stage-by-Stage Journey Mapping, Split by Powertrain

Benchmark your ICE and EV shopper journeys separately - not pooled - against 5-10 comparable brands, so you see whether your EV journey underperforms your own ICE journey, the category as a whole, or both.

Moderated Testing With Real Shoppers in Each Segment

Watching real ICE shoppers and real EV-intenders - not the same people, not internal staff - attempt to configure, finance, and book a test drive reveals exactly which questions your site fails to answer for each group.

How Tetrabase Benchmarks the Vehicle-Shopping Journey

The Tetrabase Framework benchmarks your ICE and EV shopping journeys stage-by-stage against 5-10 comparable brands in each segment, so you see exactly where each type of buyer is choosing a competitor instead of you. Concretely, here's what you walk away with:

Stage-by-stage completion rates for ICE and EV shoppers, benchmarked separately against 5-10 comparable brands
Segment-specific friction points ranked by their effect on test-drive bookings and lead conversion
Qualitative insight into where EV shoppers specifically hesitate on range, incentives, or battery questions
A prioritised roadmap your product, marketing, and dealer network teams can act on together

Your EV lineup and your ICE lineup are not being cross-shopped by the same buyer with the same questions.

Brands that treat one digital journey as good enough for both are quietly losing EV-curious buyers to competitors who bothered to answer their actual questions - and risk overwhelming ICE buyers with content they never needed. The brands winning share in both categories are the ones benchmarking each journey on its own terms, not assuming one experience fits every kind of buyer.