Social Aspects of Electric Vehicles Research—Trends and Relations to Sustainable Development Goals

Abstract

E-mobility sustainability assessment is becoming more comprehensive with research integrating social aspects without focusing only on technical, economic, and/or environmental perspectives. The transportation sector is indeed one of the leading and most challenging greenhouse gas polluters, and e-mobility is seen as one of the potential solutions; however, a social perspective must be further investigated to improve the perception of and acceptance of electric vehicles. This could consequently lead to the European Green Deal’s holy grail: faster decarbonization of the transportation sector. Another way to achieve it is by promoting more comprehensive sustainable development goals. Therefore, this paper combines a systematic review of recent research with research emphasis focused on social aspects of electric vehicles and their interconnection with specific UN Sustainable Development Goals. By knowing the current research focus mainly related with “perception” of electric vehicles and assessing their social “impact” as well as an emerging area of “user experience” and their relations with UN Sustainable Development Goals enables better insight on the current and future directions of electric vehicle social sustainability research. The current priority is identified as “climate actions”. Increasingly important “sustainable cities and communities” shows potential for becoming one of the future research, policy, and community priorities.