Willingness to pay for hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles in China: A choice experiment analysis

Abstract

The hydrogen energy is considered to be main power source of transport sector in the future, and a huge amount of funds have been invested into developing hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs). Since FCEVs are in initial development stage and there're few FCEVs on the road, before their expansion this paper intends to conduct an economic analysis for FCEVs by using the choice experiment method. In the choice experiment, 1072 participants were required to select among two FCEVs and one conventional fuel vehicle. Logit models were estimated and then the results were used to calculate the willingness to pay for FCEVs. Results showed that purchase price, driving range, refueling time, fuel cost, emissions reduction, refueling accessibility are significant influences, and the marginal values for every 200 km improvement in driving range, 5 min reduction in refueling time, RMB 0.5/kilometer reduction in fuel cost, 20% reduction in emissions, and 20% improvement of refueling accessibility were estimated to be RMB 49,091, 12,727, 3818, 47,818, and 12,909, respectively. A range of FCEV configurations were calculated, and compared to a gasoline-powered counterpart the extra value that customers were likely to pay for a FCEV ranged from RMB 20,810 to 95,310. These results have significant implications for promoting FCEVs and contribute to better sustainability in transport sector.