Learning Rates of Electric Vehicles

Governments of many countries consider the electrification of individual passenger transport as a suitable strategy to decrease oil dependency and reduce transport-related carbon dioxide (CO2) and air pollutant emissions. However, battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) and plug-in hybrid-electric vehicles (PHEVs) have been more expensive than their conventional counterparts and suffer from relatively short electric driving ranges, which still hampers the market potential of these vehicles. Despite persisting shortfalls, mechanisms such as technological learning and economics of scale promise to improve the techno-economic performance of BEVs and PHEVs in the short- to mid-term. Here, the author seeks to obtain insight into the techno-economic prospects of BEVs and PHEVs by: (i) establishing experience curves and (ii) quantifying user costs and the costs of mitigating carbon dioxide and air pollutant emissions in a time-series analysis. The analysis captures the situation in Germany between 2010 and 2016.

Text Sample:
Chapter 2: Methods:
2.1 Definitions:
Throughout this thesis, we use the terms 'electric vehicle' and 'battery-electric vehicle' (BEV) synonymously for passenger cars that are exclusively propelled by one or multiple electric engines, drawing their propulsion energy solely from an electric energy storage system such as a battery.
Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) are defined as passenger cars that: (i) are equipped with an internal combustion engine (ICE) and one or multiple electric engines, (ii) draw their propulsion energy from combustible fuels and/or electricity, and (iii) can be charged from an external electricity source (UNECE, 2015). We do not distinguish between parallel PHEVs in which the internal combustion engine and the electric engine are both connected to a transmission and can thus propel the vehicle in parallel and series PHEVs (also referred to as range-extender vehicles) in which the electric engine propels the vehicle, whereas the internal combustion engine functions as an electricity generator to charge the battery. Our choice is justified by the limited number of PHEV models offered on the market in each individual year of our analysis. We acknowledge that not distinguishing between parallel and series PHEVs introduces uncertainty into our analysis because parallel PHEVs equipped with a small, thus less costly, battery and a full-size internal combustion engine are lumped together with series PHEVs equipped with a comparatively large, thus costly, battery and a rather small internal combustion engine. However, the database contains only around 8.5% (5 out of 59) vehicles with range extender, meaning that PHEVs take the major part in the analysis.
Throughout this thesis, we refer to 'conventional vehicles' (CVs) as passenger cars propelled exclusively by an internal combustion engine that draws its energy from combustible fuels such as gasoline or diesel.
2.2 Data collection:
In our analysis, we include BEVs, PHEVs, and comparable CVs sold in Germany in the period between 2010 and 2016. Having used an extended web search we start out by identifying all models of BEVs, PHEVs, and their respective conventional counterparts that are produced in series and offered for sale on the German market in each individual year of our analysis. Regarding BEVs, we only include vehicles for which the given price includes the traction battery. For example, the manufacturer Renault sells its BEVs without traction battery and instead charges a monthly leasing fee for the battery. Vehicles with lease battery are excluded from our data collection because their prices are not comparable to the battery-including prices stated for other BEVs. Moreover, we exclude from our analysis BEVs and PHEVs that are: (i) produced in limited series (i.e., less than 1,000 vehicles per year) and (ii) intended for racing rather than passenger transport (e.g., Porsche 918 Spyder; McLaren P1).
For each vehicle included in our analysis, we collect data on the sales price1 [EUR], maintenance costs [EUR], fixed costs related to insurance and vehicle registration in Germany [EUR], engine power [kW], if applicable, the capacity of the traction battery [kWh], certified distance specific energy consumption [kWh/km; l/100km], CO2 emissions [gCO2/100km] and the certified emissions standard as published by the miscellaneous manufacturers on their web pages, in their product brochures, or as published by third parties like newspaper articles or web pages (see Tables 16 and 17 in Appendix A). If there is no price for a certain vehicle model in a given year available, the price of the previous year has been assumed. This assumption can be made because manufacturers tend to announce price changes on their web pages; relevant information becomes also available via third parties like newspapers. Equivalent conventional vehicles are chosen, as far as feasible, to match the year of production, vehicle category, manufacturer name, model, t