Are multi-car households better suited for battery electric vehicles? Driving patterns and economics in Sweden and Germany

By N. Jakobsson, T. Gnann, P. Plötz, F. Sprei, Sten Karlsson. 2016

135 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Battery electric vehicles (BEVs) could reduce CO2 emissions from the transport sector but their limited electric driving range diminishes their utility to users. The effect of the limited driving range can be reduced in multi-car households where users could choose between a BEV and a conventional car for long-distance travel. However, to what extent the driving patterns of different cars in a multi-car household’s suit the characteristics of a BEV needs further analysis. In this paper we analyse the probability of daily driving above a fixed threshold for conventional cars in current Swedish and German car driving data. We find second cars in multi-car households to require less adaptation and to be better suited for BEV adoption compared to first cars in multi-car households as well as to cars in single-car households. Specifically, the share of second cars that could fulfil all their driving is 20 percentage points higher compared to first cars and cars from single-car households. This result is stable against variation of driving range and of the tolerated number of days requiring adaptation. Furthermore, the range needed to cover all driving needs for about 70% of the vehicles is only 220 km for second cars compared to 390 km for the average car. We can further confirm that second cars have higher market viability from a total cost of ownership perspective. Here, the second cars achieve a 10 percentage points higher market share compared to first cars, and to cars in single-car households for Swedish economic conditions, while for Germany the corresponding figure is 2 percentage points. Our results are important for understanding the market viability of current and near-future BEVs.

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

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b4c1e0a603de3e53a4c07351a6fa6a08f86836ca

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Automotive Engineering

1. L. Noel
2. Benjamin Sovacool
3. Johannes Kester
4. G. Rubens

In Electrical and Electronic Engineering

1. L. Noel
2. Benjamin Sovacool
3. Johannes Kester
4. Chien-fei Chen
5. G. Rubens

In Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

1. L. Noel
2. Benjamin Sovacool
3. Vlado Vivoda
4. R. Fouquet
5. Karoline S. Rogge
6. Stefan Bouzarovski

Citations in the corpus

• A review of consumer preferences of and interactions with electric vehicle charging infrastructure (2018, unknown): “Jakobsson et al. Jakobsson et al. (2016b) 2016 Sweden GPS Data (PEVs) BEV GPS measurements on households trialling a BEV for three months show very low changes in average daily driving distances compared to pre-trial measurements.”
• Assessing the socio-demographic, technical, economic and behavioral factors of Nordic electric vehicle adoption and the influence of vehicle-to-grid preferences (2020, background): “contrasts with the idea of EVs as a second car [35], [80], as we find that individuals who expressed more interest on EVs can envision it as their primary or only car in the household.”