Owners of energy-efficient houses as a target group for sustainable electric mobility

This paper presents results of a comprehensive stated choice experiment among house owners in Germany with combustion engine cars, plug-in hybrid electric cars, and battery electric cars with or without a range extender as choice options. Electric cars are still well away from economic viability. But it is shown that owners of energy efficient houses do have a substantially higher willingness to pay for electric cars compared with owners of conventional houses. That is, they will be among the first to adopt electric cars and they can be addressed straight forward with measures to promote electric cars. Since there are moderate but various support programmes relevant to this group on the national, regional, and local level combined hands-on information should be provided in specific guidelines. Further, since it was found that owners of energy-efficient houses alike owners of conventional houses tend to acquire larger and more powerful cars it should be noted that a successful promotion of EVs will not counter the trend towards bigger and more powerful cars.