The unwillingness-to-buy electric vehicles and its impact on market diffusion - a German case study

Currently, with the rise of populism in politics, we are seeing a growing number of people influenced by conspiracy theories or fake news who discredit science and often only act in segregated networks. These could also negatively affect various enviromental challenges or prolong them. In this paper, we study the effect of these very pertinent adopter groups on the adoption of plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) in Germany. For this purpose, we use results from a panel data questionnaire aiming at identifying these adopter groups and modify the market diffusion model ALADIN to determine changes in the future market diffusion of PEVs and their energy demand. We find a relatively large group (~15%) of potential vehicle buyuers that is not interested in electric vehicles and opposing changes in transport policy ("Verkehrswende"). However, due to high shares of cars sold to commercial users, the effect on PEV sales and stock is limited (-2.7% to -6.3% of BEV stock in 2035).