Marketing of electric vehicles

Substituting electric vehicles for traditional ones could reduce local pollution and greenhouse emissions from the transportation system. However, these societal benefits come at high costs to the owner of the EV in terms of price, driving range, availability, loading capacity, speed and acceleration. In addition, the usability of an EV is hampered by the lack of an infrastructure for recharging. Such a product hardly sells itself to potential customers. Besides supportive national policies, skillful marketing is needed to get it accepted and diffused throughout society. This paper outlines a two-phase strategy for the marketing of EVs based on a discussion of current and expected future characteristics of EVs and on a review of research on early adopters. (author)