Knowledge of future car purchasing behaviour is important for a variety of reasons including tax policy and energy and emissions forecasting as well as being an important input to policy making. This paper describes an investigation into the factors that determine people's decisions about what type of new vehicle to buy, thereby providing information about the engine size, fuel type and ownership of additions to the car fleet. The paper outlines the main elements of the investigation. The paper also describes the model which was developed to predict the proportion of new car sales by different engine sizes, different fuel types and different ownership types (company and private) based upon different levels of various factors which were found to be the most important in people's decisions about new car buying. The model allows the user to investigate the influence of different policies over the forecasting period by altering the levels of the various factors used in the model.
Abstract