Electrification of Household Travel by Electric and Hybrid Vehicles

Purchasers of expensive new electric vehicles (EVs) or hybrid vehicles (HVs) seem likely to use them as intensively as possible, not merely as second cars. This paper investigates intensive-use strategies for such vehicles at private households by means of a digital simulation using the travel day data from the 1977 Nationwide Personal Transportation Study. A “car-of-choice” usage strategy, in which the next home-based trip at a multi-car household takes the electric or hybrid car whenever it is available and has adequate seating capacity and range, leads to almost as much EV/HV use and travel electrification as the absolute maximum possible with perfect planning. Under this simple strategy, a single EV with four seats and a 100-mile range at each multi-car household would electrify almost 60 percent of all vehicle miles of travel by multi-car households. Average EV travel would then be some 20 percent above the average for all personal vehicles. A range-extension hybrid could electrify an equal amount of travel with a useful electric range of only 60 miles.