What do we really know about the acceptance of battery electric vehicles? – Turns out, not much

Battery electric vehicles (BEV) are essential in most countries’ transition towards an efficient, cleaner and low-carbon transport system. BEV technology has been making rapid progress, but low market uptake poses major challenges for governments and industry. Based on the PRISMA framework (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses), we assessed 94 studies published in the era of BEVs becoming visible market products between 2010 and 2019. The main goal is to understand what we know about attitudes and behaviour of consumers/citizens towards BEVs. In contrast to the conventional wisdom that we know the key facilitators and obstacles in this area, we find that few studies are designed to identify causal effects of facilitators and obstacles, and findings on widely presumed key determinants are surprisingly mixed and context-dependent. We conclude that we still lack robust evidence on the facilitators of BEV uptake and prospective ownership. Moreover, and particularly alarming from a scientific viewpoint, many existing studies cannot be replicated because the respective data is unavailable, neither publicly accessible nor on request. Given the saliency of the issue, the main implication of our assessment is that a concerted, internationally coordinated effort in this area is needed, based on pre-registration of study designs and full accessibility of replication data.