Consumer adoption of fuel-efficient vehicles is a crucial step in improving energy efficiency of the light-duty vehicle sector. To promote adoption, policymakers have employed various demand- and supply-side policies including incentives, fuel economy standards, zero emission vehicle mandate, among others. This paper measures the changes in consumers’ purchase motivations and latent demand for hybrid and plug-in electric vehicles in the wake of such programs by analyzing the past 11 years of new vehicle buyer survey data in the USA with more than 1 million respondents. The analysis reveals that electric vehicles—including hybrids, plug-in hybrids, and pure battery electric, collectively termed xEVs—had the potential to secure as much as ~ 11% of the US market in 2015, but the actual market share was only one-third of this. A narrowing of the consumer’s valuation gap between buyers of non-xEVs and xEVs for purchase motivations—including fuel economy, environmental friendliness, technical innovation, and price—is responsible for the increase in the latent demand for xEVs. The term valuation gap refers to the difference between the average rating given by non-xEV and xEV buyers for a particular purchase motivation question in the survey. The closer the ratings, the smaller will be the valuation gap. Policy instruments such as sales-weighted fuel economy target show strong correlation with the consumer valuation gap. In combination with demand-side policies that make xEVs more accessible to mainstream consumers, they could be considered as viable tools if policymakers are seeking to nudge consumers toward xEVs.

中文翻译：

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使用美国新车购买者的大规模纵向调查数据，了解混合动力和插电式电动汽车的潜在需求

消费者采用节能汽车是提高轻型汽车行业能源效率的关键步骤。为了促进采用，政策制定者采用了各种需求和供应方政策，包括激励措施，燃油经济性标准，零排放车辆强制性法规等。本文通过分析美国过去11年新的汽车购买者调查数据（超过100万被调查者），来衡量此类计划之后消费者购买动机和对混合动力和插电式电动汽车潜在需求的变化。该分析表明，电动汽车（包括混合动力，插电式混合动力和纯电池电动汽车，统称为xEV）在2015年有潜力赢得约11％的美国市场，但实际市场份额仅为一个三分之一。非xEV和xEV的购买者之间因购买动机（包括燃油经济性，环境友好性，技术创新和价格）之间的估值差距是导致xEV潜在需求增加的原因。术语估值差距是指非xEV和xEV购买者针对调查中的特定购买动机问题给出的平均评分之间的差异。评级越接近，估值差距就越小。诸如销售加权燃油经济性目标之类的政策工具显示出与消费者估值差距的强烈关联。结合需求方政策，使xEV更加易于主流消费者使用，如果政策制定者寻求将消费者推向xEV，则可以将它们视为可行的工具。