Americans’ Plans for Acquiring and Using Electric, Shared, and Self-Driving Cars
Electrifying Mobility: Realising a Sustainable Future for the Car
ISBN: 978-1-83982-635-1, eISBN: 978-1-83982-634-4
Publication date: 17 October 2022
Abstract
This chapter explores how technology availability and costs influence public opinion, vehicle ownership decisions, travel, and location choices. Attitudes towards electric vehicles (EVs) are considered within the broader context of other linked technological trends affecting automobility, with a particular focus on the shift to (electric powertrain) autonomous vehicles (AVs).
This chapter draws upon modelling of quantitative survey data from 1,426 Americans, which employed regression analysis to predict and understand variables linked to the preference for an AV over a human driver, percentage of trips taken by an AV, percentage of trips using dynamic ride-sharing (DRS) inside a shared autonomous vehicle (SAV), and factors affecting EV charging access in home and at work/school.
The findings show that full EV charging times significantly affect decisions for next household vehicle purchase. A lack of charging ability at home appears to be a significantly greater hindrance to respondents’ willingness to purchase full EVs than does a lack of charging ability at work. And home location choice impacts of AVs are not expected to be substantial. Considering future EV/AV ride-sharing (an important component of sustainable future mobility systems), DRS may ease congestion if SAV riders widely adopt DRS for work and school trips; however, sharing with strangers may not be popular in practice.
This chapter is useful to manufacturers and fleet operators for pricing and marketing decisions, and public transit authorities/providers can benefit from understanding evolving travel choices and land use patterns to craft equitable policies, and model future transportation demand to help plan services and infrastructure projects.
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Acknowledgements
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Scott Schauer-West, Maizy Jeong, and Krishna Murthy Gurumurthy for their assistance on this project, and the National Science Foundation’s Sustainable Healthy Cities Research Network for its support. On behalf of all authors, the corresponding author states that there is no conflict of interest in this work that would be positively or negatively influenced by this article’s content.
Citation
Quarles, N., Kockelman, K.M. and Lee, J. (2022), "Americans’ Plans for Acquiring and Using Electric, Shared, and Self-Driving Cars", Parkhurst, G. and Clayton, W. (Ed.) Electrifying Mobility: Realising a Sustainable Future for the Car (Transport and Sustainability, Vol. 15), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 211-230. https://doi.org/10.1108/S2044-994120220000015013
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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