Drivers need to replace their petrol and diesel cars with carbon free alternatives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and tackle climate change.

Electric vehicles (EV) are one option, with sales beginning to take off but they still make up a small proportion of cars on the road today (<5%) compared to Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles (ICEVs). Sales are rising, but from a very low level. Uptake needs to spread beyond early adopters to the entire market.

• Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs) made up 11.6% of UK new car sales in 2021, and 25.5% of new car sales in December 2021
• Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV) sales made up 7% of all new car sales in the UK in 2021.

This could be more challenging for some households than others. Around 30% of UK households have no access to off-street parking.

Energy Systems Catapult used choice experiment methodology with 2104 survey participants, including 840 EV users and 1264 were ICEV users. Among ICEV users, 561 said they were likely to acquire an EV in the next 5 years , while 703 said they were not.

Each participant was presented with twelve sets of three choice options and asked to choose one of the options in each of the sets.  The choice options had five attributes: location, time to charge, cost of charging, walking distance from home and driving distance from home.

Location – where the charging solution is located:

• On your street,
• At a local supermarket, shopping centre, petrol station, etc.,
• At a secure car park near your home where you can leave your car overnight.

Time to charge – how long it would take to charge a vehicle sufficiently to drive 120 miles:

• 35 minutes,
• 1.5 hours, and
• 4.5 hours.

Cost of charging – how much it would cost to charge a vehicle sufficiently to drive 120 miles:

• £2,
• £4,
• £8, and
• £12.

Walking distance from home – how long it would take to walk between the participant’s home and the location of the charging solution:

• 1 minute’s walk,
• 3 minute’s walk,
• 5 minute’s walk.

Driving distance from home – how long it would take to drive between the participant’s home and the location of the charging solution:

• 5 minute’s drive,
• 10 minute’s drive,
• 15 minute’s drive.

Constraints on combinations of levels – certain unrealistic combinations of attributes were excluded from the experiment. For instance, the rapid charging level (35 minutes) was never presented in terms of the cheapest cost levels (£2 and £4) as this is a combination that would rarely be encountered in practice.

Key points

The key findings of the choice experiment were:

• Current EV users without off-street parking had a small overall preference for Local Overnight Hubs over the other two locations/charging solutions, and an even smaller overall preference for On-Street Chargers over Rapid Charging Hubs.
• Current ICEV users without off-street parking had very little overall preference between the three locations/charging solutions. This does not necessarily mean that all participants had similar preferences for all three; it may indicate that approximately similar numbers of participants preferred each solution.
• The impacts of duration of charging, cost of charging, walking distance (for Local Overnight Hubs and On-Street Chargers), and Driving distance (for Rapid Charging Hubs) on choice were small compared to the impact of location/charging solution.

This study suggests that, if car users without off-street parking are to be persuaded to adopt EVs, there may need to be several alternative charging solutions available to them and all are worth exploring.

As Local Overnight Hubs are potentially more difficult to implement (due to the issue of finding suitable locations close enough to peoples’ homes), the principal options are likely to be a mixture of On-Street Chargers and Rapid Charging Hubs within around 10 minutes’ driving time from homes.