18 months ago I stood on a stage and announced that Fully Charged LIVE would be rebranded as Everything Electric in 2024.
We’ve delivered 5 shows this year – Sydney, London, Harrogate, Vancouver & Farnborough – and welcomed ~112,000 attendees, up 34% on 2023.
As part of those shows we’ve also enabled ~40,000 electric vehicle test drives. Yet, despite our best efforts it’s still a drop in the ocean.
We love the events, and we know how important they are, but we still feel they’re in their relative infancy, and that in time they will be much, much bigger.
The sad reason for this is that the tech we love (electric home & motor) is still somewhat niche, and until now, often unaffordable.
Ironically, while the cost of these technologies, and the upfront costs in particular, are plummeting, breaking into mainstream consciousness is not easy.
Politics plays a major role in this – does a Government favour your sector? As does Economics – do people have the money to invest?
In the UK both of these factors have acted as barriers in recent years. We think that 2025 will be a year of ‘green shoots’ here at home.
Overseas we’ve benefited from tailwinds, not headwinds, and our Australian and Canadian show growth is outpacing our homegrown shows.
What’s more, we’ve seen much, much more support from car companies in those territories, something we believe we will rectify in 2025.
The one thing that is harder to handle is the torrent of misinformation about EVs (& cleantech), and that is why we’ve launched Electric Vehicles UK.
Industry needs to get off the back foot that misinformation has put us on, and back on the front foot, selling the many benefits of EVs (& cleantech).
I talk about this, and about all of the behind-the-scenes business stuff in a recent podcast with Imogen Bhogal, which I humbly suggest is worth a listen.
This includes why we are about to take sponsorship on the Fully Charged SHOW for the first time in my tenure on the channels.
The short version of why we’re doing this, is that we are trying to insulate our business from the turbulence that our industry continues to face.
While we are happy with our UK shows this year, the truth is our attendance at Farnborough dipped slightly year-on-year.
We welcomed 24,311 attendees to a heavily ‘weatherized’ Farnborough, as opposed to 26,279 in the significantly drier and warmer spring conditions of 2023.
Yes, we did have an extra event in London, but we do not believe that this is the reason why.
We believe it has more to do with politics, economics, misinformation and unprecedented rainfall; in short, events beyond our control.
Weather aside, we are forecasting a brighter year ahead, but out of an abundance of caution we will reduce to 2 events in the UK in 2025.
It’s a hard decision, but in consultation with our clients, Harrogate is going to have a hiatus, with the intention of bringing it back in 2026.
London and Farnborough will return, as with Sydney and Vancouver, and we are adding a new venue overseas to take us up to 5 shows.
We aim to deliver 6 shows in 2026, and ultimately to deliver 10 shows a year by 2030. Growth potential for each of the shows remains sizable.
We haven’t ruled out returning to Amsterdam but some significant policy changes around electrification have given us pause for 2025.
While we are keeping a close eye on the political situation in the US, we have decided that our new exhibition in 2025 will be a 2nd show in Australia.
After lengthy discussions, we have narrowly preferred Melbourne over Brisbane, and we will be debuting there on the 14th-16th November.
This means our running order for 2025 will be as follows:
- Everything Electric AUSTRALIA NSW – Sydney Showground, 7th-9th March
- Everything Electric LONDON – ExCel, 16th-18th April
- Everything Electric CANADA – Vancouver CC, 5th-7th September
- Everything Electric SOUTH – Farnborough, 10th-12th October
- Everything Electric AUSTRALIA VIC – Melbourne Showgrounds, 14th-16th November
We are targeting 175,000 attendees and 60,000 test drives in 2025, and after a brief respite this December, we anticipate being ‘Fully Charged‘ for the challenge ahead.
Thanks as always for your support, it is sincerely appreciated.
Dan, Robert & the team.
