Analyzing consumer attitudes towards electric vehicle purchasing intentions in Spain: Technological limitations and vehicle confidence

The history of the automotive industry was initially linked to electricity. However, the combustion engines would become the dominant paradigm later. Nowadays, because of several factors, the automotive industry has been researched on electric vehicles (EVs) for several decades, although this industry will have to overcome important obstacles to commercialise this kind of vehicles efficiently. In this context, the main aim of this paper is to discover to what extent some issues are key to explain consumers' willingness to buy an electric vehicle. We focus on consumers' perceptions about technical specifications of electric cars, such as charging times, consumers' perception of the price of the electric vehicle, driving range and drivers' ages, among others. We design a survey in order to obtain some factors linked to consumers' profile which are later crossed with their expectations to buy an electric vehicle. A logistic regression analysis was conducted to explain the willingness to buy an electric car by using the information of 1245 Spanish respondents. Our results indicate that the higher a consumer's perception of the price of electric vehicles and the longer charging times are, the less a consumer's willingness to buy a new electric car is. The results are useful to define key elements linked to the most appropriate industrial policy which helps companies promote the electric vehicle. (C) 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.