Technology Forecasting: Case of Electric Vehicle Technology

Abstract

Electric vehicles are seen by the public as a solution to the growing societal concern of green house effect created by the transport sector. Moreover there is a strong consensus that in the future it will be cheaper to own and drive electric vehicles. Since the advent of electric vehicles in 1899 not much progress has been made to make electric vehicles available at reasonable cost to the public. In the last few years vehicle manufacturers started to manufacture electric vehicles but still the adaption rate is less than 1%. The available data on electric vehicles is therefore limited to shed light on the future adaption rate. Our literature review has shown that the most important factors for EV diffusion are oil price and technological advancement of EV. Therefore, these two factors have been used as the two axes in the scenario planning. The literature review also helped us identify the current policies, and what policies will remain in effect in the future, and until what year EV will be needing policy support before it becomes technologically and economically a viable option. This paper suggests policy implications depending on different scenarios until 2025. Characteristics and implication of these scenarios will also be discussed.