Social & locational impacts on electric vehicle ownership and charging profiles

Abstract

Electric vehicles have been acknowledged as a key element of future low-carbon transportation. Unlike conventional vehicles, additional barriers to uptake exist in respect of the availability of charging provision and, for the immediate future, higher capital costs. In this work, we apply an agent-based behaviour and vehicle use model based on the UK National Travel Survey to explore how housing-derived social class, income and access to charging provision at home affect the uptake of electric vehicles. We further analyse the impact of this additional charging requirement on demand profiles across a range of urban, suburban and rural locations and show that the nature of housing and associated social class impact on both the uptake of electric vehicles and the resulting charging demand profiles. This raises questions of social equitability in regard to incentive regimes and recovering the costs of network reinforcement that may be needed as electric vehicle adoption grows.

Keywords

• Electric vehicle
• Agent-based
• Social equity
• Demand
• Profiles
• Socioeconomic