Government and commercial interest notwithstanding, there has been a relative paucity of academic literature on the subject of alternative fuel vehicle (AFV) demand, and almost all of the published work has been US-based. In this work, the behavioural issues associated with estimating the demand for AFVs in a UK context were investigated. In terms of methodological innovation, this paper makes two principal contributions; first, in developing and applying alternative decision process models, and second, in developing and applying a complex stated preference experiment. The principal survey instrument was a mail-back stated preference (SP) experiment analysing households' choices between hypothetical vehicle alternatives. This was supplemented by a focus group analysis, the aim of which was to explore the decision processes involved in vehicle ownership, purchase and use and the interaction between the ownership and use decisions. Of particular relevance to this paper is the observation that as the volume of information presented to an individual is increased, a decision task can quickly become unmanageable, and lead to the adoption of simplifying decision heuristics. Such heuristics may achieve a satisfactory, but not necessarily utility-maximising, solution. The experiment developed in this paper featured three alternatives and eight attributes. A car purchase choice task was presented involving three alternatives; Car A was broadly consistent with a conventional petrol or diesel car, Car C was broadly consistent with a near-term AFV, and Car B was a compromise option, which might represent some form of future 'clean' petrol or diesel vehicle or a future AFV with performance features more comparable with a petrol or diesel vehicle. Each car was described in terms of the following attributes: on-the-road price, running costs, range on a full refuel or recharge, time for a full refuel or recharge, top speed, time taken to accelerate from 0-60 mph, retained value after 3 years or 36,000 miles, and emissions as a percentage of a year 2000 petrol car. Each attribute was specified at four levels. Some indicative results from the analysis, where the stated preference data are applied to the estimation of three types of models are described. Using standard sample enumeration techniques, the market share of AFVs was forecast under a range of scenarios. If the representation of vehicle types in the experiment is anything like realistic, the market share for AFVs would be at most 8% or 9%, and this would increase to 9% to 11% in the event of a 20% reduction in on-the-road price. Furthermore, relatively small changes in AFV performance (improvements in running costs, range, refuelling time of up to 20%) would still, in most cases, fail to increase the AFV share substantially above 10%. For the covering abstract see ITRD E126595.
Abstract