Modeling demand for electric vehicles: the effect of car users' attitudes and perceptions

The near arrival of electric vehicles on the car market generates a need for new models in order to understand and predict the impact it has on the current market shares. This research aims at providing contributions regarding several issues related to the evaluation of the demand for electric vehicles, i.e. related to the survey design, demand models and forecasting. In this paper we focus on the first of these three methodological issues. We present the design of a stated preference survey which will enable us to accurately model and predict demand for electric vehicles. Our aim is to propose choice situations involving electric cars and petrol-driven ones and in particular which include the respondents' own cars. An experimental design is set up in order to test the effect of the variation of several characteristics related to electric cars on vehicle preferences. Opinion and perception data are also collected to capture the impact of attitudinal variables on the purchase decision. This document also presents promising preliminary results of the estimation of the logit model with multiple alternatives.