Assessing the socio-demographic, technical, economic and behavioral factors of Nordic electric vehicle adoption and the influence of vehicle-to-grid preferences
Introduction
Electric vehicles (EVs) continue to penetrate national vehicle fleets, having surpassed 5.1 million EVs globally on the road by the end of 2018 [1,2]. This global EV stock is mostly concentrated in three areas, with about 45% in China, followed by Europe with 24% and the United States (US) with 22% of the total EV stock [2]. Moreover, in terms of entire vehicle stock, European countries continue to lead the way, with over 10% of all vehicles in Norway being either battery electric vehicles (BEVs) or plug-in hybrids (PHEVs), followed by Iceland (3.3%), the Netherlands (1.9%), Sweden (1.6%) and China (1.1%) [[1], [2], [3]]. However, China holds the largest EV market, with 1.1 million EVs added to its national fleet by the end of 2018 [2].
In terms of the market share of new vehicle sales, EVs continue to progress, particularly in Europe, where in countries like Norway, around one out of every two sold cars are electric (see Fig. 1). While BEVs account for about 64% of the global EV fleet , there is a trend within some EV markets that sees PHEVs becoming the dominant EV option, particularly in countries like Iceland, Sweden, and Finland where over 80% of EVs are PHEVs, and other markets such as Japan and the United Kingdom with around 70% of the EV stock being PHEVs [2]. This trend is due to their ability to mitigate the social and industrial barriers of full-electric vehicles, such as range anxiety and diminished business revenues, since PHEVs at their core still have a combustion engine powertrain. Moreover, the continued use of petrol (gasoline) as fuel by PHEVs provides a source of revenue for automakers and their supporting (refueling) networks [4]. Despite the progress of EVs in penetrating some national fleets and increased rates of EV sales, the total stock of EVs remains only at around 0.2–0.3% of the whole global passenger fleet [1,5]. International Energy Agency projects an entire EV stock of 13 million EVs by 2020, and nearly 130 million by 2030 [1]. In this projection, EV sales increase from 4 million in 2020 up to 21.5 million by the end of the decade, driven by many of the active policies shown in Table 1.
A significant number of studies have analyzed the independent influence of EV costs, socio-demographics, driving practices, social norms, adoption motivation, the connection between EV acceptance and other sustainable behaviors, and electric mobility factors such as battery life, fuel economy, charging time, and charging station availability (among other factors). Nonetheless, less is known about the influence of these interconnected factors together on EV adoption, as well as the link between vehicle-to-grid (V2G) capability and EV adoption intention.
This study investigates the interconnected influence of socio-demographics, behavioral, economic, and technical factors on EV adoption interest in the Nordic countries, as well as how preferences differ according to V2G capability. Particularly, we draw from empirical survey data and use a hierarchical regression analysis (among others) to examine the impacts of a wide range of interconnected factors on EV adoption interest: socio-demographics (e.g., income, gender, age, etc.), behavioral factors including mobility practices, environmental values and sustainable behaviors (e.g., install energy efficiency appliances, solar panels or renewable energy system adoption, recycling and eating less meat), economic factors or financial attributes (e.g., the expected costs of the next vehicle, vehicle purchase intention and purchase time frame), technical factors of conventional (gasoline) vehicle performance, and electric mobility.
We define EVs here as any passenger vehicle that uses energy drawn from the electric grid and stores it on board for propulsion [6]. Our definition thus includes battery electric vehicles (BEVs) and plug-in electric hybrid vehicles (PHEVs), but not other low-carbon options such as e-bikes or those relying on biofuel or hydrogen exclusively, nor conventional hybrid vehicles, as these latter vehicles are mostly run with petrol and diesel. Although motivations and barriers for BEVs and PHEVs may differ, we have included them under the single class of “EVs” because that is often how they are discussed in the popular press and in marketing materials. V2G is defined as technologies that allow EV owners not only to charge an EV, but also to store electricity in its battery and return it back to the electricity grid when the vehicle is connected to a home, work or public charging station [[7], [8], [9]]. While there is increasing literature on the effects of V2G on the grid and even connecting EVs to virtually “anything” (through V2X) [7,10,11], the link between V2G capability and EV adoption remains arguably underexplored.
In proceeding as such, we aim to make three contributions. First, much research focuses on only one dimension to EV adoption, such as driving range or purchase price. Here, we focus on all of them, drawing from separate streams of research correlated with six distinct dimensions (socio-demographics, conventional car performance, electric mobility, financial attributes of cost and purchasing intention, mobility practices, and sustainability values). Second, we analyze these six dimensions step-by-step and consider each independent variable's (IV) effect by controlling for other factors' effects. Third, this study is one of the few studies to examine the role of V2G capability in EV adoption interest.
Section snippets
Synthesizing six dimensions of EV adoption interest and V2G influence
The growing body of literature on EV and (to a lesser degree) V2G adoption tends to emphasize the importance of six dimensions, encompassing different aspects of adopters, conventional vehicle performance, and supporting technological (and social) infrastructure. Below we explore these dimensions.
Method
To empirically test and validate our framework, hypotheses, and questions, we relied on original data collected from a large-scale survey distributed throughout the Nordic region. This section summarizes our sampling strategy, survey procedure, and data analysis techniques.
Results
This section presents our main findings, organized around descriptive statistics before moving to the step-by-step hierarchical multiple regression analyses.
Discussion and findings
This study investigated the interconnected effects of socio-demographic, technical, economic, and behavioral factors on stated preference for EVs and V2G. Table 6 offers a summary of our results based on our hypotheses and research questions. Overall, we find that the effect of certain socio-demographics on EV adoption interest remains rather consistent across the five tested models.
As Table 5 indicates, males were consistently more interested in EVs than females, affirming existing literature
Conclusion
Ultimately, these collective insights from the analysis of six interconnected dimensions translate into some compelling implications. Socio-demographic attributes of potential adopters, such as age, gender, or income, are essential. Still, they are no less, or more, important than other characteristics, such as financial considerations, experience with an EV, or having values orientated towards sustainability. EV adoption is shaped simultaneously by extrinsic factors (e.g., availability of
Author contribution
C.-F. Chen led the efforts of data processing and analysis, and manuscript writing and revision. G. Zarazua de Rubens, L. Noel, J. Kester, and B. K. Sovacool designed the survey, collected data and helped with writing the manuscript and revision.
Acknowledgments
The authors are appreciative to the Danish Council for Independent Research (DFF) Sapere Aude Grant 4182-00033B “Societal Implications of a Vehicle-to-Grid Transition in Northern Europe,” which has supported elements of the work reported here. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the DFF. The first author was supported in part by the Engineering Research Center Program of the
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- 1
She is an evironmental sociologist and her research examines social and technological integration, energy justice and renewable energy adoption behaviors.
- 2
His research focuses on energy and transport systems, data analytics and business development and his recent focus Electric Vehicle and Vehicle-to-Grid implementation in Europe.
- 3
He is an Associate Faculty member at the Science Policy Research Unit at University of Sussex. At the time of writing, he was a postdoctoral researcher at Aarhus University.
- 4
University of Oxford, but at the time of writing a postdoctoral researcher at Aarhus University, Denmark, working on sociotechnical transformations in electricity and alternative transport systems, and the role of security in these transformations. .
- 5
He is also Director of the Center for Energy Technologies and Professor of Business and Social Sciences in the Department of Business Development and Technology at Aarhus University in Denmark.