Utilization of battery-electric vehicles in two-car households: Empirical insights from Gothenburg Sweden

Journal article, 2020

Two-car households with one conventional and one battery electric vehicle (EV) have an op- portunity to partially circumvent the range limitations of a modest-range battery-electric vehicle through flexible use. To investigate the extent to which real-world households utilize this flexi- bility, we used from 20 two-car households in the Gothenburg area in Sweden, GPS data from before and during an EV trial in which the households were asked to temporarily replace one of their two conventional cars with a short-range EV for the duration of the trial. The actual household electric drive fraction, i.e., the EV distance as a share of the total two-car household driving distance varied between 30 and 70%, with a household mean of 47%. On average, this corresponds to 80% of the estimated potential household electric drive fraction during the trial. We quantify the flexibility in choosing the EV as the difference in distance between the potential, and the minimum needed, EV driving. For below-range (≤120 km) home-to-home non-over- lapping trips, the households used 69% of that flexibility. For household trips that did overlap in time, they used 56% of the flexibility. Thus, the EV is the preferred vehicle, but the preference is less obvious for overlapping trips. Our analysis implies an even more dominant role for the EV in weekend driving. Further, although the pre-trial data showed a large difference in the household shares of distances driven between a (later in the EV trial) replaced “first” car and a replaced “second” car, this difference disappears when an EV replaces either one.