Total Cost for Society: A persona-based analysis of electric and conventional vehicles

The purchase and usage of a car comes at a cost for the owner, i.e. the Total Cost of Ownership, but also causes costs to society, i.e. external costs. Summing up the privately borne costs with the publicly borne costs results in the Total Cost for Society. To assess how ownership costs and external costs are currently balanced in the Total Cost for Society for different vehicle technologies, we present a persona-based analysis of the costs categories associated with the ownership and usage of electric and conventional cars within three passenger car segments. Six persona represent diverse driver profiles with different mobility patterns in Flanders (Belgium). We find that the balance between ownership costs and external costs is highly variable given the assumed persona, while for each persona the ranking between the vehicle technologies themselves does not vary much.