Assessing factors for the identification of potential lead markets for electrified vehicles in Europe: expert opinion elicitation

This paper integrates findings from specialized literature and expert opinion evaluation to increase the understanding of present and future drivers for electric drive vehicle (EDV) market uptake on a wide spatial scale as a basis for subsequent multi-criteria evaluations applied to different market deployment scenarios. Two types of analyses were integrated to achieve the goal of the identification of drivers, which indicate the lead markets for EDV adoption. First a list of criteria and factors was developed based on a literature survey. Secondly, this factor set was then verified and assessed by a panel of experts representing key stakeholders with different scientific and technical background at the European level. The factors were broadly grouped under five different criteria: “demography”, “environment”, “economy”, “energy” and “transport”. The expert survey included a valuation of each of the factors providing quantitative, qualitative and importance weighting values for each of the factors for the years 2020 and 2030 and the validity of factors roster and the level of expert congruence. The results of the study indicate that the experts have confidence in battery electric vehicles (BEV) and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) to reach a sustained market deployment by 2030 and a spatially increasing market distribution from 2020 to 2030 as revealed by the sale projections provided by them. The experts seem to consider PHEVs as more robust vis-à-vis the investigated factors than BEVs. The screened factor set includes well-to-wheel emissions, privileged access to dedicated lanes, parking and city centers, the technology learning rate and population density for both vehicle types. Fuel cost savings received congruent feedback for electric drive vehicles. The list which was derived can assist in informed political decisions as to at which scale and area a policy intervention might be appropriate in order to support lead markets for BEVs and PHEVs in Europe.