Sustainability adoption trend analysis

Abstract

The sustainability trend in the automotive market has been analyzed. A dataset of cars was elicited from select companies that have increased their market share in the United States automotive market over the past decade. In the first part, a linear regression model is developed to evaluate how the market share is influenced by key vehicle characteristics, and in particular, to evaluate the role of sustainability in that analysis. For the second part, game theory has been applied to see how market dynamics change in relation to sustainability moves of two competitors. The third part uses technology forecasting techniques to suggest which technology to invest. The results of the paper show that, in the long term, sustainability will be a significant factor in determining a company’s market share. Investing in manufacturing processes that reduce the cost of battery systems can support the competitiveness of hybrid vehicles but so too can investing in research and development to reduce the energy density gap between gasoline and batteries.