Review of hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and electric vehicle market modeling Studies

Hybrid, plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles (HEVs, PHEVs, and EVs) are emerging automotive products that have the capability to increase vehicle fuel economy, but at an incremental purchase cost relative to conventional vehicles. In general, their reduced petroleum consumption and improved efficiency provides life cycle economic benefits to consumers, society, automakers, and policymakers. These stakeholders have sought to understand the role of HEVs, PHEVs, and EVs in the future vehicle fleets by estimating the diffusion rate of these technologies into the automotive marketplace. This review presents a comprehensive summary of the literature of HEV, PHEV and EV penetration rate studies, their methods, and their recommendations. These studies have applied a suite of analytical and computational tools to model the consumer acceptability of these technologies under a wide variety of policy and macroeconomic scenarios. The results of these studies are compared and synthesized to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the field and to propose further means for improvement of advanced technology vehicle market modeling exercises. On the basis of this review, the authors recommend that modeling of HEV, PHEV and EV penetration rates should include improved interfaces with consumer surveys, modeling of automakers' actions, federal and state policy and its effect on automotive markets, competition among technologies, market volume, vehicle classifications, and model parameters sensitivity analysis. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.