An Investigation into Key Influence Factors for the Everyday Usability of Electric Vehicles

Abstract

Society relies on electric mobility to decrease the problems associated with local emissions and global climate change. One key factor for the success of electric vehicles is their everyday usability. Today's users must deal with limited driving range in a sparse charging infrastructure. In this work, we investigate central features influencing the everyday usability of electric vehicles, such as battery capacity, charging infrastructure, range prediction accuracy and vehicle concepts. Since the influence of these aspects depend on each other, they cannot be examined separately. Therefore, we created a stochastic simulation framework with vehicle models and map data to calculate a large amount of different feature variations. One of our key findings is that battery capacities beyond 100 kWh are not feasible. In addition, we stated the importance of an accurate range estimation algorithm and a dense network of high-performance charging points for everyday usability. Taking these results into consideration would help policy makers and automobile manufacturers achieve worldwide acceptance of electric vehicles.