Residential Neighbourhood Charging of Electric Vehicles: an exploration of user preferences

In this study, we investigate the preferences for private electric vehicle (EV) charging among households without a private residential charging option. We seek to understand which attributes of a residential neighbourhood charging service would offer an attractive substitute to charging an EV on private property overnight, as is most common among existing EV owners. Our stated choice experiment is designed to reflect preferences for parking as well as charging behaviour in order to ground the choices in trade-offs familiar to a target market representative of car drivers who are unlikely to be able to charge at home. Our findings suggest that this target population has different socio-demographic characteristics from the early adopters of EVs, and that therefore their priorities and preferences are different. Whether on-street or in a car park, the local environment in which the EV charging service sits and the experience of walking home after plugging in the vehicle is of primary importance. Some will also value the certainty of an available space over its convenience.