This study explores the symbolic meanings being created, appropriated, and communicated by the owners of hybrid electric vehicles. As symbolic meanings are shown to be important to hybrid electric vehicle purchase and use, understanding the meanings, as well as their construction and communication, is essential for policy makers and others hoping to promote these new types of vehicles. Hybrid electric vehicles embody combinations of meanings that were previously unavailable from automobiles. Market observers who fail to recognize this struggle to explain why some people buy hybrid electric vehicles. They may characterize buyers as naïve about calculating payback on fuel economy, or dismiss owners as image-seeking environmentalists. This research belies such simplistic explanations. Through the telling and analysis of buyers' own stories, this study takes a robust approach to understanding the creation and spread of new symbolic meanings in the automotive market. Data were collected in ethnographic interviews with hybrid electric vehicle owners in the California, and analyzed using methods based on semiotic theory. In particular, the study explores how widely recognized social meanings (denotations) are connected to more personal meanings (connotations) and the effect that both types of meanings have on vehicle purchase and use.

This research is designed to help researchers and policy makers ground their work in the reality of how US consumers are thinking and behaving with respect to automotive fuel economy. Our data are from semi-structured interviews with 57 households across nine lifestyle ''sectors.'' We found no household that analyzed their fuel costs in a systematic way in their automobile or gasoline purchases. Almost none of these households track gasoline costs over time or consider them explicitly in household budgets. These households may know the cost of their last tank of gasoline and the unit price of gasoline on that day, but this accurate information is rapidly forgotten and replaced by typical information. One effect of this lack of knowledge and information is that when consumers buy a vehicle, they do not have the basic building blocks of knowledge assumed by the model of economically rational decision-making, and they make large errors estimating gasoline costs and savings over time.Moreover, we find that consumer value for fuel economy is not only about private cost savings. Fuel economy can be a symbolic value as well, for example among drivers who view resource conservation or thrift as important values to communicate. Consumers also assign non-monetary meaning to fuel prices, for example seeing rising prices as evidence of conspiracy. This research suggests that consumer responses to fuel economy technology and changes in fuel prices are more complex than economic assumptions suggest.The US Department of Energy and the Energy Foundation supported this research. The authors are solely responsible for the content and conclusions presented. r

This is the autho s e sio of a o k that was published in the following source: Hardman, S.; Jenn, A.; Beard, G.; Daina, N.;Figenbaum, E.; Jochem, P. E. P.; Kinnear, N. A. D.; Pontes, J. P.;Refa, N.;Turrentine, T. S.; Witkamp, B. (2018). AbstractThis paper presents a literature review of studies that investigate infrastructure needs to support the market introduction of plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs). It focuses on literature relating to consumer preferences for charging infrastructure, and how consumers interact with and use this infrastructure. This includes studies that use questionnaire surveys, interviews, modelling, GPS data from vehicles, and data from electric vehicle charging equipment. These studies indicate that the most important location for PEV charging is at home, followed by work, and then public locations. Studies have found that more effort is needed to ensure consumers have easy access to PEV charging and that charging at home, work, or public locations should not be free of cost. Research indicates that PEV charging will not impact electricity grids on the short term, however charging may need to be managed when the vehicles are deployed in greater numbers. In some areas of study the literature is not sufficiently mature to draw any conclusions from. More research is especially needed to determine how much infrastructure is needed to support the roll out of PEVs. This paper ends with policy implications and suggests avenues of future research.Next, we provide background information on charging modes and levels and then introduce the approach to the literature review. Section 2 then summarises the literature, whilst Section 3 concludes with insights for policymakers and literature gaps.

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Since car buyers have limited practical experience with FCVs, direct study of FCV adoption is not feasible. However, consumer behavior toward other types of advanced-technology vehicles may offer clues about how the market for FCVs will develop. Research of hybrid-electric vehicles (HEVs) indicates that consumers adopt these vehicles partly because of the vehicles' symbolism. Any vehicle can serve as a symbol; it can represent larger ideas, meanings that frequently relate to the identity of the vehicle's owner. This qualitative research study examines early buyers of HEVs to understand the symbolic meanings they perceived in their vehicles and the role symbolism played in their vehicle purchases. Findings from these buyers are then prospectively applied to the future market for FCVs. The study includes four specific recommendations to increase the possibility that FCV buyers can access and communicate relevant symbolic meanings with their vehicles.

Popular media and even researchers commonly assume that ownership of a battery electric vehicle (BEV) provides consumers less performance and mobility than consumers expect. A common claim is that consumers have constant worry about the range of their BEVs, often termed “range anxiety.” BMW converted 450 Mini Coopers to all-electric drive (named the Mini E) and leased them to fleets and 235 private households in the Los Angeles, California, and New York–New Jersey regions from spring 2009 to spring 2010. Through the course of the 1-year lease, University of California, Davis (UCD), researchers conducted multiple online surveys and in-person interviews and administered weeklong driving diaries. This paper explores the reactions of Mini E drivers to the driving distance of the Mini E through the framework of a lifestyle learning process. Over time, Mini E drivers learned how the 104-mi range of the Mini E fit into their lifestyles. Drivers adapted and explored with their Mini E through activities such as altering driving behavior (such as speed and trip routes), optimizing charging opportunities, planning trips, and educating themselves on distances to destinations with the help of online and mobile mapping tools. In the course of the UCD Mini E consumer study, researchers found evidence suggesting that the driving range was not a major concern for these early adopters. Even with no public charging available to their vehicle, 100% of survey respondents stated that BEVs were suitable for daily use. The results of this study will be of interest to policy makers and practitioners interested in expanding the BEV market.