Electric vehicle market potentials - User acceptance, total costs of ownership, and changes in mobility behavior

The need to decrease oil dependency and environmental pollution as well as adapting to new emerging mobility needs within societies is an essential objective for politics and economy. Until now, in road transport, one of the most relevant sectors in this respect, oil consumption and emissions are still increasing and are going to do so in the following decades. Hence, all efforts underachieved their targets so far. Only a technological or social breakthrough seems to have a chance to achieve the objectives. A broadly discussed technology is the electrification of the car and, furthermore, first evidence of social changes with respect to car ownership and usage of multimodal integrated mobility services could be observed. From our perspective both developments fit very well together. The higher invest and lower variable costs of the electric vehicle (EV) support the tendency to car sharing approaches and make them more affordable. However, these changes lead to an impact on the automotive industry, policy, society, new stakeholders and the corresponding international industrial context, which might lead to a moderation of a market penetration of EVs. ... mehrOur analysis is focused on the market potential of EVs with respect to future mobility concepts, mobility behavior and an analysis of future total cost of ownership (TCO) development for different countries and user groups. In a first step society and transportation developments are linked and drivers of the diffusion of EVs are determined. To be able to finally describe consumers’ purchase decision criteria for EVs in a second step, the outlined tendencies are substantiated by inferring from own user acceptance study which has been conducted within the framework of the project crome (Cross-border mobility for EVs) with more than 150 users of battery electric vehicles (BEV) in the French-German Upper-Rhine border region.In a final step, the concept of the (TCO) analysis is contemplated in order to compare the costs of BEV and conventional cars. The results of different comprehensive TCO analysis are then combined with the results of the acceptance study in order to identify potential user groups. Furthermore, the results are discussed within the scope of future mobility behavior and mobility trends – does this have an impact on the identified user groups? Looking at society and transportation developments a major conversion of mobility behavior cannot be identified at present, even though structural changes may suggest it. However, there are indications that such a change will take place driven by innovation in the fields of mobility concepts (e.g. car sharing), information and communications technology (e.g. Car-to-X) as well as changes in social trends (e.g. more intermodal trips).