Consumer evaluation of public charging infrastructure for electric vehicles

This paper explores factors that determine the usefulness of public charging infrastructure for electric vehicles from the point of view of its potential users. Our analysis is based on evaluations of different (hypothetical) public charging infrastructure networks by 1003 drivers of passenger cars from Germany. We employ a hierarchical linear model to explore the relevance of the attributes of public charging infrastructure as well as the influence of personal characteristics on the respondents' evaluations. Our main conclusions of the results are that public charging infrastructure is generally important to attract additional consumer segments to EVs. In addition charging duration at the autobahn as well as in cities seems to be more important to the mainstream passenger car drivers than the density of public charging spots. Our results also provide some indications regarding distinct target groups and the willingness to pay for public charging infrastructure.