COPE-SMARTER - A decision support system for analysing the challenges, opportunities and policy measures: A case study of electric commercial vehicles market diffusion in Denmark

Abstract

Stakeholder’s strategies in encouraging wide-scale market penetration are dependent on

their perceptions. This study focuses on perceptions of Danish practitioners in policy-making

organizations regarding the perceived challenges, opportunities and policy measures for the

majority-market adoption of electric commercial vehicles (ECVs) in commercial sector in

Denmark. We propose a new four-step expert-based technique, named COPE-SMARTER, for

evaluating the market diffusion of environmental friendly technologies by combining a private

case of SWOT analysis and Multi-criteria Decision analysis (MCDA) methods. We focus on the

perceptions regarding: (i) the potential promotional strength of motivators for ECV market

penetration, (ii) the severity of the technological, financial, physical and operational challenges,

(iii) the efficiency of policy initiatives in encouraging the market diffusion of ECVs, (iv) the

expected market penetration rates by target year. The results show the strength of the COPE-

SMARTER technique in generating a clear, coherent, and tractable evaluation. Severe challenges

are financial, operational and technological, with high purchase prices being by far the most

severe challenge. The opportunities with high promotional strength are financial and

environmental, with overall savings in the long-term as the opportunity with the highest

promotional strength. Effective policy-measures are low registration fee for electric vehicles,

state subsidies for the purchase or use of electric vehicles, and emission-based taxes on vehicles.