Mainstream consumers driving plug-in battery-electric and plug-in hybrid electric cars: A qualitative analysis of responses and evaluations

By E. Graham-Rowe, Benjamin Gardner, C. Abraham, S. Skippon, H. Dittmar, R. Hutchins, J. Stannard. 2012

706 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Plug-in electric vehicles can potentially emit substantially lower CO2 emissions than internal combustion engine vehicles, and so have the potential to reduce transport emissions without curtailing personal car use. Assessing the potential uptake of these new categories of vehicles requires an understanding of likely consumer responses. Previous in-depth explorations of appraisals and evaluations of electric vehicles have tended to focus on ‘early adopters’, who may not represent mainstream consumers. This paper reports a qualitative analysis of responses to electric cars, based on semi-structured interviews conducted with 40 UK non-commercial drivers (20 males, 20 females; age 24–70 years) at the end of a seven-day period of using a battery electric car (20 participants) or a plug-in hybrid car (20 participants). Six core categories of response were identified: (1) cost minimisation; (2) vehicle confidence; (3) vehicle adaptation demands; (4) environmental beliefs; (5) impression management; and, underpinning all other categories, (6) the perception of electric cars generally as ‘work in progress’ products. Results highlight potential barriers to the uptake of current-generation (2010) plug-in electric cars by mainstream consumers. These include the prioritization of personal mobility needs over environmental benefits, concerns over the social desirability of electric vehicle use, and the expectation that rapid technological and infrastructural developments will make current models obsolete. Implications for the potential uptake of future electric vehicles are discussed.

Subfields: Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e21b3571e4763b2d4dcd67b7b75919bb513eea91

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In Electrical and Electronic Engineering

In Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law

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Citations in the corpus

Consumer preferences for electric vehicles: a literature review (2017, background): “TRA N SPO RT REV IEW S 265 considered as a “car of the future” (Burgess, King, Harris, & Lewis, 2013; Caperello & Kurani, 2011) or a “work in progress” (Graham-Rowe et al., 2012).”
The role of instrumental, hedonic and symbolic attributes in the intention to adopt electric vehicles (2013, methodology): “adoption of EVs will indeed depend on their instrumental attributes: purchase price, running costs, reliability, performance, driving range, and recharging time are all factors that are likely to influence the adoption of EVs (e.g., Beggs, Cardell, and Hausman, 1981; Bunch et al., 1993; Chéron and Z”
How to activate moral norm to adopt electric vehicles in China? An empirical study based on extended norm activation theory (2018, positive): “For example, previous research has indicated that purchase price, driving range, performance, and recharging time all have a significant impact on EV adoption (Graham-Rowe et al., 2012; Skippon and Garwood, 2011).”
Temporality, vulnerability, and energy justice in household low carbon innovations (2019, background): “” Some drivers even attempted to recharge their vehicles not by plugging in at home or at work, but by running the internal combustion engine and then using the re-generative braking system to “charge” their vehicle “thereby negating the carbon savings” (Graham-Rowe et al., 2012).”
Electric vehicles revisited: a review of factors that affect adoption (2017, background): “Graham-Rowe et al. (2012) found that the 40 U.K. participants in their EV driving experiment generally appreciated at-home charging because it promoted a sense of autonomy.”
Interacting with limited mobility resources: Psychological range levels in electric vehicle use (2013, background): “Still, further research with mainstream drivers is needed, where more critical EV attitudes and less favorable interaction patterns are likely (Graham-Rowe et al., 2012).”