An experimental analysis of consumer preferences towards public charging infrastructure
Gracia Brückmann, Thomas Bernauer
Abstract
As the share of battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) in car fleets increases, more and more car holders will need to charge their electric vehicles at public facilities. Designing public charging infrastructure so as to make it attractive to current and future BEV holders thus becomes essential. We implemented a choice experiment with a large sample of current BEV (N = 950) and non-BEV (N = 1,881) holders to examine the relevance of several design features that are widely presumed to be important in this regard: waiting (queueing) time, charging time, price, energy source, and amenities. Mean queueing time turns out to be most relevant, and car holders are also willing to pay for limiting or avoiding (uncertain) queueing times. The main implications for commercial and public charging infrastructure providers are that they should seek to provide fast charging, real-time observability of charger occupancy, and the opportunity to reserve chargers.