Empirical analysis of electric vehicle charging behaviour, charging choice attribute importance and attitudes to risk

Abstract

With continuing growth of electric vehicle (EV) sales and intermittent renewable baseload power supply, EVs can help balance future power grids, through charging and vehicle-to-grid discharging. Understanding charging behaviour will assist flexibility incentive and policy design. We gathered strategic and tactical charging choice attribute preferences and risky choice charging scenario data from 203 EV and petrol/diesel vehicle users. Empirical analysis revealed a riskaverse majority, particularly around range, with varying, evolving risk attitudes across heterogeneous groups. The most context relevant risk attitude predictor was time sensitivity. Flexibility incentives can target range, cost, time and charge location feature aspects of ‘where’, ‘when’ and ‘how much’ to charge/discharge choices, segmenting EV users by risk attitude. Policymakers can target EV adoption interventions at risk-averse groups. Non-expected utility theory methods, focusing on heterogeneous risk attitudes across attributes and segments appear appropriate for explaining risky choices in this context.