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Brooke Canova was nervous after she and her husband bought their Ford F-150 Lightning, the electric version of the enormous, classic pickup truck.
She wasn’t worried about running out of charge and being stranded on the road, or whether the truck would have enough oomph to merge onto a speeding highway. Canova, a health and physical education teacher and mother of a preteen son in Charlottesville, Virginia, fretted about the vehicle’s size.
“I’m not going to be able to drive this!” she recalled thinking. “It’s too big. How will I park it?”
The purchase was a sort of compromise: Her husband had long wanted a truck, and she finally agreed to go along if it was electric.
As it turns out, the vehicle has enough cameras to help Canova manage its girth. It can parallel park itself in self-driving mode. What’s more, she can drive to Richmond, Virginia, and back on one 320-mile charge. And since her rooftop is equipped with 27 solar panels, it costs her family less than $6 a month to charge the truck at home.
“It has been a lot of fun,” Canova said, especially as a woman driving a big truck that’s electric to boot. “It’s sort of a conversation piece. People are like, ‘Wow, look at you in that thing!’”
That’s just the reaction Generation180 is hoping to provoke. Headquartered in Charlottesville, the nonprofit has recruited Canova and some 7,000 other “EV ambassadors” nationwide to spread the word about their experiences online and in person.
While the group supports policies to speed the clean energy transition, its core mission is to “inspire and equip” people to adopt clean energy in their own lives, said Executive Director Stuart Gardner. EV ownership, he said, is a vital “stepping stone” to other clean energy actions.
Gardner’s team has long encouraged people to drive electric. But last year, their research found remarkable gender disparities among the “EV curious” in Virginia. Women said helping the environment was a top reason to drive electric, tied with saving money. Yet just a quarter of women had heard “a lot” about EVs, compared to nearly half of men.
The Virginia survey was backed up by other studies, which showed just 30% of women had some familiarity with EVs, compared to over half of men. In all, more than 70% of EV owners are men.
“There was an obvious disconnect, Gardner said. The “I’ll Drive What She’s Driving” campaign, now in its second year, was born.
The initiative is focused on reaching women in the suburbs — auto-dependent areas where electric vehicles are ideal for short trips and where many new-car buyers live, said Gardner. Suburbs also “tend to be evenly split Democrat and Republican,” he said, “So, they [offer] a great opportunity to say, ‘Hey, EVs are for everyone.’”
At the crux of the effort is the belief that people in general and women in particular are skeptical of the increasingly polarized information landscape and are looking for reliable messengers.
The women EV owners Generation180 has identified did a lot of research first, said Shakaya Cooper, program manager with the group. Much of that homework involved talking to friends and colleagues, she said. “They’re intentional in their research, and they are going to people that are trusted sources, for sure.”
That’s where volunteer ambassadors like Canova come in. Last fall, she brought her F-150 Lightning to a car show tied to a downtown Charlottesville event, where various EV makes and models were on display. A graduate of the University of Virginia, she’s also attended college basketball games with a suite of other women to talk about going electric.
“It was just a really nice vibe — talking to people about their cars, what they like, what they don’t like,” she said, having “those really approachable conversations between moms.”
Beyond official functions organized by Generation180, Canova and her family undoubtedly pique EV curiosity in their community by milking all the Lightning’s bells and whistles in their daily lives.
One popular feature is the “frunk,” a trunk in the front where a combustion engine would normally go. With a drainage hole and light insulation, it can act as a cooler. Plus, the entire vehicle is equipped with outlets — making it perfect for tailgating.
“One of our favorite things to do with the truck is tailgate because we plug in an [electric] pellet grill and a griddle and a TV — all into the truck bed, which has been a lot of fun,” she said. “We tailgated for a Little League game the other day; the whole team was there.”
After a year with the Lightning, Canova and her husband were so sold on driving electric that when her treasured Ford Escape perished last summer, she replaced it with a used Tesla. “We haven’t really encountered any moments where we’ve been desperate to have a gas vehicle,” she said. “We’re all in.”
Some 340 miles south of Charlottesville in Bostic, a tiny town in the North Carolina foothills between Charlotte and Asheville, Terri Watts and her husband are equally thrilled with their EV but for very different reasons.
As the owners of a high-end chauffeur service, they use their fleet of 17 premium vehicles to transport customers to wine and beer tours, weddings, and scenic vistas in this tourist-heavy corner of the state. One of their most popular rides is a Rivian, especially among clients who have their own EV at home and are committed to a low-carbon lifestyle.
“It’s another offering that fits what some people are looking for,” said Watts, who is also a Generation180 EV ambassador. “I think it allows us to maybe get more business. There are people who, unless [they can get] an electric vehicle, they’re not interested.”
From a financial perspective, the Rivian is a no-brainer. The couple paid tens of thousands of dollars less for it than their other luxury vans, and its operating costs are much lower. There are no oil changes, and they can fully charge it overnight at their house for $15. If a driver needs to use a public fast charger, the price might run as high as $45. By contrast, filling up one of their conventional SUVs with premium fuel runs between $55 and $75.
The Rivian’s style and performance has also won converts. “It’s really nice. It’s very roomy on the inside,” Watts said. “It’s got the speed that you can’t beat.”
One recent weekend, she added, a pair of women had wanted a sedan for their sightseeing tour, but it was booked. They rented the Rivian instead and enjoyed it so much they reserved it again for the next day of their trip. “They were super impressed,” Watts said.
In addition to having person-to-person conversations about their EVs, scores of women including Watts and Canova have blogged about their experiences for Generation180. The group has also identified social media influencers who’ve rented EVs and posted about activities ranging from the novel to the mundane, like charging at the shopping center while buying groceries.
“The individuals have been moms, families, single women,” Cooper said, “just sharing, ‘I could go hiking in the rural part of North Carolina or in a rural part of Virginia and still be able to charge.’”
Cooper and other advocates acknowledge that long road trips in EVs still require more planning than those in conventional gas-powered vehicles. And the price of entry to drive electric, while falling, is still too high for many.
Lawmakers in both Richmond and Washington, D.C., have sought in recent years to alleviate these barriers to EV adoption. Biden-era tax credits for new and used electric vehicles lower upfront costs. A nationwide commitment to charging infrastructure, especially in rural areas, is critical for peace of mind on long road trips.
In Virginia, state lawmakers created an electric vehicle rebate program four years ago but have yet to fund it. In a move most observers say is illegal, Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin last year announced Virginia won’t follow a 2021 state law that commits it to standards set by California’s Clean Cars program — which requires automakers to sell more electric cars in the coming years.
At the federal level, the Trump administration has frozen billions of dollars for states to build charging stations, also likely in violation of the law. Just before the Memorial Day weekend, House Republicans muscled through a massive tax bill that, in addition to dealing other blows to clean energy, would end the electric vehicle tax credits and charge EV drivers new fees. The legislation is now in the hands of the Senate, which could make changes.
“It’s really unfortunate. It really hurts the more rapid adoption of electric vehicles,” said Gardner, who says the credits and rebates should be preserved. But, he added, the turbulence in Washington reinforces the value of his group’s “I’ll Drive What She’s Driving” campaign.
“We’re seeing now that policy can be very fragile,” he said. “But trusted messengers and the clean energy constituencies that we’re building — those have real staying power.”
A correction was made on May 27, 2025: The caption for the first image in this story originally misidentified Brooke Canova as the person on the right. Canova is on the left.
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