EVs have come under intense scrutiny and criticism recently due to their re-emergence in the market. Most of the topics that have been brought up are old issues that were present in the previous false dawns of EVs. These concerns can be broadly placed into two categories:
1. Will an EV be able to do the job of a conventional vehicle?
2. Will an EV be able to reduce the problems of environmental impact and energy security related to personal vehicle transport?
The second category can be answered by relating to the fuel source used to power EVs and the materials and techniques used to build them. If the fuel used to generate the electricity for EVs is of similar carbon intensity the pollution is simply being exported and centralised from multiple sources on roads to rural power plants. Now this may not be an entire failure as centralisation of emissions away from urban centres does have benefits for human health. Energy security is dependent on where the fuel is sourced from and if this source is stable in both overall production and also price level.
The first category relates almost entirely to the practical functionality of an EV such as luggage capacity, performance, safety and range. Range is a reoccurring theme for EVs and technological innovation has taken place in an attempt to overcome range anxiety. Battery technology is enjoying heavy investment levels and range extending EVs (that incorporate small ICEs to recharge the battery) could be of significant potential.
The concept of range is quite often phrased in a way that it depicts EV drivers marooned on the hard shoulder of roads because their battery’s have ran out of energy. A dimension that is perhaps overlooked is that of whether or not EVs will substantially affect an individual’s level of mobility and, if so, in what capacity?
To address this question it needs to be considered in way that goes beyond the absolute measure of vehicle miles travelled (VMT). It may be easy to induce that personal mobility has been decreased, increased, or stayed the same if the VMT of an individual is the same after the intervention as before it. This objective measure must also be linked with an individual’s subjective perception of their mobility and this concept is not as easy to measure. Indeed, VMT may decrease whilst mobility actually increases as a result of modal shift to public and self mobilized transport. To generate a more accurate reflection of an individual’s mobility will require a measure that takes into account both objective and subjective factors that may not be easily compatible.
This may take the form of “trip evaporation” rates whereby an individual decides to make a reduced level of trips compared to their previous levels. This measure needs to be supplemented by considered why the individual has decided to make fewer trips, is it a conscious choice or is it due to the limiting factors attributed to EVs?
I can easily conceive of two ways that EVs may objectively (as in measured by VMT only) increase an individual’s mobility. Firstly, they may feel the need to use their vehicle more intensely in order to decrease the payback time associated with the EV cost premium combined with low operating costs. Secondly, individuals may use their EV for trips that they would have, in the past, travelled by using some other mode of transport due to the green image of an EV. For example, very short of very long trips that an individual may have walked or taken the train may now be conducted with the EV.
It will be very difficult to state the mobility impacts of EVs until they are widely incorporated into the vehicle market. Some of the impacts are likely to be unanticipated, indirect and perhaps undesirable. I hope that this discussion has shown that it will not be just a straight forward task of monitoring the VMT of drivers who adopt an EV and that a deeper analysis will be required.
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