Lowering car prices and multiplying charging stations will not be enough to encourage consumers to buy electric vehicles. We will also have to act on their motivation and their psychology, Swiss researchers tell us.
VSesearchers at the University of Geneva interviewed 2,000 motorists from different backgrounds and ages in the United States and Germany. They realized that some barriers to vehicle purchases were simply in the minds of motorists. Their study shows that one of the main “cognitive biases” in buying a car, in other words, one of the thought patterns that seems rational, but is not.
This is the analysis that we make of the autonomy of the car in relation to its needs. This team has calculated that the consumer systematically underestimates the autonomy of the battery by 30% compared to his real needs compared to the reality of his journeys and the kilometers traveled on a daily basis. Motorists have a psychological block on the purchase of a car that has less than 300 km of autonomy, when, in reality, 90% of trips can be made with a car with 200 km of autonomy. Continually increasing the size of batteries is therefore not the most important element in accelerating the transition to electric transport, say the researchers. In fact, beyond the proliferation of charging stations of course, we must inform the consumer and act on this psychological brake.
Studies show that there is also a psychological barrier in France to buying a car with less than 400 or 500 km of autonomy, explains Cécile Goubet, General Delegate of Avere-France, the National Association for the Development of electric car. With us too, the consumer tends to exaggerate the mileage traveled on a daily basis. And with the price of the car which obviously remains an important element, the fear of running out of autonomy or of a charging station remains the main obstacle to purchase. And yet progress has been made. While it is true that France has not reached the target of 100,000 terminals for 2022 as planned, with more than 60,000 charging points open to the public in France, we are one of the three best-equipped European countries, behind Germany and the UK.
We can recall some figures on the carbon footprint of an electric vehicle compared to a thermal vehicle. Example: the electric car reduces CO2 emissions by more than 70% compared to a thermal vehicle over its entire life cycle, according to figures from theEnvironment and Energy Management Agency (Ademe). To simplify: according to a study by the consulting firm Carbone 4, in France, an all-electric city car has a carbon footprint three times less than its thermal counterpart over its life cycle. For sedans, it’s twice as much.