Assessment of the Total Cost of Ownership of Electric Vehicles in Poland

Abstract

Eliminating environmental and air pollution is one of the European Union’s priority actions in the field of transport. Poland, as a member of the European Community, is also actively involved in these activities. The flagship project, the implementation of which is expected to bring tangible effects in this respect, is the “Sustainable Transport Development Strategy until 2030”. It states that in 2030 there should be 600,000 BEVs (battery electric vehicles) on Polish roads. At present, the share of such vehicles in the automotive market in Poland is small, which is a result of a number of barriers. One of them, very important considering the preferences of Poles, is the cost of buying such a car, which is currently at least 40% higher than its counterpart with a combustion engine. Meanwhile, popularizers of electric cars believe that the cost of buying such a vehicle is offset by the subsequent costs associated with its operation. Hence, this paper determines and then compares the total purchase and operating costs of cars of the same make, same model, differing in the source of propulsion, to category M1. Cars in this category represent the largest share of the automotive market in Poland—over 75%. The main objective of the analysis conducted was to determine if a current electric passenger vehicle can be competitive with an internal combustion car in everyday use. Therefore, a relationship was developed to calculate the total cost of ownership, which takes into account all the key criteria from the point of view of private vehicle use. The utilitarian value of this research may be supported by the fact that the example of Poland and its problems concerning the issue in question may serve as a source of preliminary analysis for other countries.

Electric and gasoline vehicle total cost of ownership across US cities

“…Ireland (Guo et al, 2022), Italy (Franzò et al, 2022;Scorrano et al, 2020), Korea (Moon & Lee, 2019), Malaysia (Mustapa et al, 2020), New Zealand (Hasan et al, 2021), Norway (Figenbaum, 2022), Poland (Ewelina & Grysa, 2021), and Thailand (Suttakul et al, 2022). Some studies compare across countries (Baek et al, 2021;Palmer et al, 2018).…”

Selection of Electric Vehicles for the Needs of Sustainable Transport under Conditions of Uncertainty—A Comparative Study on Fuzzy MCDA Methods

“…According to the 'Sustainable Transport Development Strategy until 2030' in force in Poland, 600,000 BEVs [18] are to be used on Polish roads by 2030. This goal is more realistic than the previously planned 1 million EVs by 2025 [19], but still difficult to achieve.…”

“…According to the latest research conducted in Poland, only 13% of respondents consider an EV as the first choice when buying a new car, including 2.7% of them claiming to buy a BEV [2]. In order to encourage consumers to buy BEVs, owners have introduced privileges such as: exemption from fees in paid parking zones, free entry to clean transport zones (which currently do not exist in Poland) and the possibility of using bus lanes [18]. However, these benefits are very small, considering that one of the main reasons for the low popularity of EVs in Poland is their very high price compared to conventionally powered vehicles [2,18].…”

“…In order to encourage consumers to buy BEVs, owners have introduced privileges such as: exemption from fees in paid parking zones, free entry to clean transport zones (which currently do not exist in Poland) and the possibility of using bus lanes [18]. However, these benefits are very small, considering that one of the main reasons for the low popularity of EVs in Poland is their very high price compared to conventionally powered vehicles [2,18]. Therefore, several government subsidy programs for the purchase of BEVs have recently been introduced in Poland.…”

“…Even limited to BEVs belonging to the most popular A-C segments, there is a choice between a dozen different vehicles. Due to the fact that the purchase of an EV is several times more expensive investment than the purchase of a vehicle with an internal combustion engine [18], the decision regarding the selection of a specific BEV must be carefully considered. The choice is even more difficult as it required the analysis of many different, often imprecise and conflicting parameters of the vehicle, such as range, charging time, price, safety, etc.…”