E-mobility from a multi-actor point of view: Uncertainties and their impacts

Germany has introduced measures favorable to the deployment of electric cars, but, so far, their diffusion has been slow. To assess the decarbonization of the transport sector, a wider range of factors and stakeholder priorities must be considered. A multi-criteria approach shows that car users and vehicle manufacturers are likely to resist e-mobility. However, a decision model based on the multi-criteria approach heavily depends on the characteristics of the car categories and on the weights determining stakeholders’ motivations. In practice, neither the exact characteristics nor the exact weights are known exactly. By systematically varying the characteristics and weights, we take these uncertainties into account and test the robustness of the results. Moreover, we identify factors linked to policy measures promoting a particular car technology. Whilst we find that incentivizing the adoption of hybrids is possible, shifting the attitude of car users towards electric vehicles is difficult, since electric vehicles have disadvantages for this stakeholder. Electric utilities support electric vehicles, as they are consistent with their business model whilst government supports them only once ecological and economic concerns gain equal importance. This indicates that new approaches involving penalizing conventional cars may be necessary to the dissemination of electric cars.