Charged up? Preferences for Electric Vehicle Charging and Implications for Charging Infrastructure Planning

Abstract

This study assesses respondents’ preferences for privately-used passenger electric vehicle (EV) charging with respect to the six attributes: (1) place of charging; (2) charging duration (full charge); (3) charging technology; (4) waiting time for charging spot to become available; (5) share of renewables in the electricity mix used for vehicle charging; and (6) total cost for the whole bundle of attributes per month. Due to the low number of current EV users in Germany, investigating consumers’ EV charging infrastructure preferences and their willingness to pay (WTP) for it based on real usage data is challenging. In addition, the results would not be directly transferable to the development of sound business cases since the sample size is too small. Therefore, we gathered data through a Discrete Choice Experiment (DCE) conducted in Germany (N=4,101). Our DCE measures the preferences for certain attributes of EV charging infrastructures indirectly by confronting participants with hypothetical choice bundles. We analyze the data using conditional logit models, including fixed effects at the participant level, in order to gain actionable insights into the expected charging behavior of current and future EV drivers. We predict tendencies of consumer behavior and show that locational and time attributes are highly appreciated. Respondents are willing to pay, on average, around 22 €/month more for charging at home rather than at work and 46.26 €/month more for charging at home rather than on the roadside. For a reduction in charging time from 8 h to 7 h, respondents are willing to pay around 8 €/month; whereas from 8 h to 10 min, respondents are willing to pay around 70 €/month for all monthly charging processes. We also find WTP of five specific consumer categories (environmentalists, EV owners, EV experts, at-home charger, and home owners). Our results could be useful for charging point operators.