Examining individuals preferences for hybrid electric and alternatively fuelled vehicles

By Brian Caulfield, S. Farrell, Brian F. McMahon. 2010

197 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper examines individuals motivations when purchasing vehicles, focusing upon what factors would encourage individuals to purchase hybrid electrical vehicle (HEV) or alternatively fuelled vehicle (AFV). AFVs in this paper refer to any cars run on alternatives to petrol and diesel. This research attempts to ascertain whether reductions in fuel costs, vehicle registration tax (VRT), or green house gas emissions would encourage individuals to purchase a HEV or an AFV instead of a conventional vehicle. VRT is an Irish tax that is levied on the purchase of new vehicles. One of the motivations to conduct this research was to examine a new car tax and VRT scheme introduced by the Irish government in 2008. This new policy rewards the purchase of environmentally friendly cars, with lower VRT and car tax rates. To understand individuals' perceptions of these new taxes a survey was sent to recent customers of a car company in Ireland. The survey asked respondents about their recently purchased vehicle and how important they considered vehicle attributes such as environmental performance, fuel cost, and safety, before making their car purchase. The survey also contained a number of stated preference experiments that were designed to ascertain what factors influence individuals' decisions when purchasing their new car. The results showed that respondents did not rate green house gas emissions or VRT as crucial attributes when purchasing a new vehicle. The vehicle attributes that respondents rated most highly were reliability, automobile safety, fuel costs, and the cost price. The majority of respondents agreed that HEVs and AFVs are better for the environment, cheaper to run than conventional vehicles and would be the vehicle of choice in ten years time.

Subfields: Automotive Engineering, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/08b6ba04c809849dbdcb706a781c6302bfda54ac

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In Automotive Engineering

In Electrical and Electronic Engineering

In Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

Citations in the corpus

Effects of providing total cost of ownership information on consumers’ intent to purchase a hybrid or plug-in electric vehicle (2015, background): “Research suggests that fuel economy, government incentives, environmental concerns, and general interest in technological innovations are influential in driving vehicle purchasing decisions (Caulfield et al., 2010; Ozaki and Sevastyanova, 2011).”
The spatial pattern of demand in the early market for electric vehicles: Evidence from the United Kingdom (2018, background): “Applications of Discrete Choice Modelling (Train, 2009) have generally found that citizens are averse to the limited driving ranges and purchase price premiums of EVs, with the reduced environmental impact and improved operating costs of EVs unlikely to overcome these negative evaluations (Potoglou ”
Willingness-to-Pay for Alternative Fuel Vehicle Characteristics: A Stated Choice Study for Germany (2014, background): “…and Liu, 2009; Qian and Soopramanien, 2011; Shin et al., 2012; Ito et al., 2013), Australia (e.g. Hensher and Greene, 2006, Beck et al., 2011), and Europe (e.g., Dagsvik et al., 2002; Batley et al., 2004; Caulfield et al., 2010; Mabit and Fosgerau, 2011; Lebeau et al., 2012), to name but a few.”
Consumer Preferences for Alternative Fuel Vehicles: A Discrete Choice Analysis (2013, background): “Our study builds on the rich body of literature on the demand for AFVs, which has been primarily carried out in the US (Beggs et al., 1981; Calfee, 1985; Bunch et al., 1993; Golob et al., 1993; Brownstone and Train, 1999; Brownstone et al., 2000; Axsen et al., 2009; Hidrue et al., 2011; Musti and Ko”