Synthesising evidence on approaches to accelerating the transition to electric vehicles

Given the reasonable assumption that people will still be driving two and four-wheeled vehicles in 30 years, then the transition away from internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEVs), and almost certainly to electric vehicles (EVs), is an essential one for complete decarbonization of the transportation sector. In one country – Norway – this transition is taking place at breathtaking speed, but this is an outlier, and question remains how to accelerate it elsewhere. There are many policies currently in operation in order to do so, and many competing beliefs on how to do it better.

In this paper, I qualitatively synthesize the results from separate studies related to this issue, each of which highlights different aspects of the challenge of accelerating the transition. These fall into three main categories: (1) studies that model consumer choices, according to economic and convenience factors; (2) studies that examining consumer preferences and beliefs, to understand the factors that influence their acceptance of EVs and the policies that would phaseout the use of ICEVs; and (3) qualitative evaluation of alternative policy instruments, to understand their effectiveness at addressing the barriers to accelerated diffusion. The studies themselves have been conducted in multiple European countries, and concerned both private cars and motorcycles.

The synthetic results highlight the importance of regulatory approaches, particularly with respect to the availability of residential charging infrastructure. They also highlight the divide between popular perception of many environmental and economic aspects of EV ownership, and a resulting low acceptance rate both of EVs and the policies that would phase out ICEVs. As we identify several causes for this low acceptance, including the discourses within which EV ownership and use are characterized, our results also offer lessons to both policy-makers and policy-entrepreneurs seeking to develop politically-feasible interventions.