Characteristics and attitudes of actual electric vehicle adopters from different classes of cities

The pathways to the uptake of Electric Vehicles (EVs) may vary across cities and regions. This paper investigated characteristics and attitudes of early EV adopters from three different classes of Chinese cities, namely Beijing, Wuhan and Shijiazhuang, which were defined as the upper, middle and lower classes of cities, respectively. A questionnaire survey was conducted in 2017 in the three study areas separately, targeting at actual EV adopters. In total, 1119 samples were collected. Discrete choice models were developed to relate decisions and attitudes of EV adopters to their sociodemographic characteristics and the class of a city which they were from. The results suggested that the class of a city was a statistically significant factor to several of the decisions and attitudes, including the reason for choosing EVs, actual payment made for EVs owned, preferences towards EVs and demand for public charging infrastructure. Specifically, the early adopters from the lower class of city tended to pay less for purchasing EVs. Also, they tended to agree on that EVs were generally better than Conventional Vehicles (CVs) given that their purchase costs were the same. As a result, over 80% of them would still purchase an EV given that no financial incentives were provided. Furthemore, those early EV adopters from the lower class of city tended to accept a lower density of charging stations. Finally, the potential applications of the empirical findings in policy making and infrastructure planning were discussed.