A customer's view on policy measures to promote electric vehicles

Abstract

Electric vehicles represent a promising approach to reduce local vehicle emissions, and thus to improve air quality in urban regions. Their market uptake, however, is still staying below expectations in most countries across Europe, due to monetary and non-monetary barriers. Besides monetary incentives, different non-monetary policy measures to promote electric mobility are either discussed or already in place. Since the different monetary incentives across Europe have proven to be not equally effective in the support of the electric vehicle market uptake, it is expected that non-monetary policy measures will not express the same impact level in different countries, too. Therefore, the project "Incentives for Cleaner Vehicles in Urban Europe" (I-CVUE) aims to understand the efficacy of policy measures that promote electric vehicles in Europe. In order to gain a deeper understanding a stated preference survey was executed that focusses on studying the value of policy measures and further non-monetary aspects of electric vehicle ownership. The online survey was directed at vehicle drivers and fleet managers in Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Spain. Based on the obtained data, country-specific willingness-to-pay values are deducted, which can be used to assess the utility of electric vehicles. The results are used to derive recommendations to city-level policy makers on efficient measures to promote electric vehicles.