A gas engine contributes more to the sensory experience of a cabin than most people consciously register: a faint mechanical smell, a low hum, a background presence that, whether pleasant or not, fills part of the sensory space. Electric vehicles remove almost all of it, which changes the sensory equation for a dealership more than it might first appear.
With the engine's contribution gone, whatever else is present in the cabin, or absent from it, becomes proportionally more noticeable. A quiet, scentless EV cabin can read as sterile or unfinished in a way a traditional cabin, with its familiar automotive ambient presence, generally did not. Customers evaluating an EV for the first time are already processing an unfamiliar quiet. An unconsidered scent situation on top of that can compound the sense that something about the experience feels incomplete.
This is an argument for treating scent as a more deliberate part of the EV delivery and test drive experience specifically, not less. A considered, calming fragrance can actually help fill that newly quiet sensory space with something pleasant and intentional, turning what might otherwise read as sterile into something that reads as genuinely refined instead.
As EV inventory becomes a larger share of what any dealership moves, the sensory experience inside that inventory deserves the same deliberate attention as the technology being sold. The engine used to do some of this work by accident. Now it has to be done on purpose.