Electric vehicles are capturing ever larger market shares of the new vehicle market in several large vehicle markets such as Europe and China. However, electric vehicles still only make up a small fraction of the total vehicle fleet. Much research has been focused on the perspective of existing or prospective adopters of Electric Vehicles. Less emphasis has been placed on intermediaries such as vehicle salespeople, who could be important mediators in the product matching process by providing helpful information, facilitating direct experience and directly influencing vehicle buyers' adoption decisions. This paper addresses this research gap using a qualitative investigation of vehicle salespeople at OEMs who sell both Electric Vehicles and Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles on the Swedish market. Fifteen interviews with vehicle salespeople at leading OEMs were conducted in the fall of 2017. The results reveal that the sales process of vehicles is mainly focused on the sales of Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles. Electric Vehicles are treated as niche products which often require the vehicle buyer to initiate the sales process. It can be concluded that OEMs, dealerships and vehicle salespeople have taken relatively few steps to influence mainstream buyers to consider Electric Vehicles as an alternative to Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles at the point of sale. Possible reasons for the bias towards Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles can be found in the apparent lack of training and experience regarding Electric Vehicles among vehicle salespeople, more extended sales and delivery times for Electric Vehicles and a commission structure that often favours Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles.

The introduction of electric vehicles in taxi companies has shown that operating electric taxis can be profitable and useful already under current circumstances. However, a significant future increase of electric taxis within relatively short time could impose severe challenges to the system. In this paper, current charging patterns and demand for electric taxi rides were analysed to design future scenarios with a significantly higher number of electric taxis and changes in fast charging technology and pricing. A qualitative stated adaptation experiment was carried out among taxi drivers and carriers in order to explore important human factors for coping with changing driving and charging conditions in scenarios with significantly more electric taxis or potential policy changes. The main findings are that hired drivers and carriers react differently to temporal price differentiation. Hired drivers make more use of faster but more expensive charging infrastructure than carriers do. Speed and convenience of charging events seems to be more important for hired drivers than for carriers. An increasing number of electric taxis is likely to increase the strains on urban public charging infrastructure, thereby stimulating charging at home or at currently less popular charging infrastructure. Moreover, there is a risk that the already existing imbalance between carriers and hired drivers could escalate in the future.

Electric vehicles have thus far only captured a small share of the vehicle market. Much research has been focused on the perspective of existing or prospective adopters of Electric Vehicles. Less emphasis has been placed on intermediaries such as vehicle salespeople, who could be an important mediator in the product matching process by providing useful information, facilitating direct experience and having a direct influence on adoption decisions of vehicle buyers. This paper addresses this research gap by means of a qualitative investigation of vehicle salespeople at OEMs who sell both Electric Vehicles and Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles on the Swedish market. 15 interviews with vehicle salespeople at leading OEMs were conducted in the fall of 2017. The results reveal that the sales process of vehicles is mainly focused on the sales of Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles. Electric Vehicles are treated as a niche product which often requires the vehicle buyer to initiate the sales process. It can be concluded that relatively few steps have been taken by OEMs, dealerships and vehicle salespeople to influence mainstream buyers to consider Electric Vehicles as an alternative to Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles at the point of sale. Possible reasons for the bias towards Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles can be found in the apparent lack of training and experience regarding Electric Vehicles among vehicle salespeople, longer sales and delivery times for Electric Vehicles and a commission structure that that often favors Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles.

This study investigates the usability of electric vehicles (EVs) in a taxi company in Greater Stockholm, Sweden. By investigating cost and revenue data of both electric and conventional taxi vehicles, as well as by interviewing taxi drivers and carriers, an assessment has been made of the financial and operational implications of using EVs in a company's taxi fleet. Both the drivers' and the carriers' perspectives have been examined. The main findings are that the investigated e-taxis have a similar or lower Total Cost of Ownership and slightly higher profitability than the investigated conventional taxis. For taxi drivers, using e-taxis implies more advanced planning and revenue service time being sacrificed for charging. However, certain customers' preferences for EVs, as well as benefits such as corporate clients favoring e-taxis and a zero emission priority queuing system at Stockholm's main international airport (partly) compensate for time devoted to charging. In order to facilitate increased use of e-taxis, more fast charging facilities should become available at strategic locations. Besides that, there are signs that carriers' lack of information about the opportunities and consequences of shifting towards e-taxis hamper a wider deployment of e-taxis.

The aim of this paper is to explore how mainstream vehicle buyers perceive and apply Total Cost of Ownership in their vehicle choice process. All else equal, rational consumers ought to evaluate Total Cost of Ownership in order to acquire the real cost of owning a particular vehicle under consideration, unless bounded rationality is affecting their behavior. The results reveal that vehicle buyers generally are capable of understanding the relative size of indi- vidual costs that make up vehicle Total Cost of Ownership but fail to evaluate and apply multiple costs in their vehicle purchase process. Regression analysis exposes that income, educational level, stated importance of Total Cost of Ownership and the number of vehicles in the choice set have a positive asso- ciation with the degree that consumers conduct an evaluation of vehicle Total Cost of Ownership. Failure to consider Total Cost of Ownership can lead to uneconomic vehicle choices, which is here labeled as the TCO paradox. This could have an especially negative effect on the diffusion of battery electric ve- hicles, which require a more detailed cost analysis in order to extract its low operating cost structure.

This paper aim to identify and investigate a group of potential adopters that are compatible with Battery Electric Vehicles (BEV) in terms of range and charging, a group labeled as BEV Compatible (BEV-C). The results reveal that the BEV-C group constitutes 14 % of new vehicle buyers and that their intention to adopt BEVs are stronger compared to the non BEV-C group. The BEV-C group can be characterized as individuals that are less likely to conduct occasional longer drives (over 150 km), perceive BEVs more positively, have higher environmental awareness and have been exposed to more BEV information compared to the non BEV-C group.

Battery electric vehicles (BEVs) have been slow to diffuse on the international as well as the Swedish market. Previous studies have indicated situational factors such as economic factors, size and performance to be of major importance for vehicle purchasers in their choice of vehicle. In this paper, the authors explore a consumer centric total cost of ownership (TCO) model to investigate the possible discrepancy between purchase price and the TCO between internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEVs), hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) and BEVs. The creation and testing of the TCO model reveals that computation could be a challenging task for consumers due to bounded access of relevant data and the prediction of future conditions. The application of the model to the vehicle sample found that BEVs could be cheaper compared to ICEVs and HEVs. The findings in this paper could prove to be of importance for policy and marketing alike in designing the most appropriate business models and information campaigns based on consumer conditions in order to further promoting the diffusion of BEVs in society.

This paper documents the product development project that was carried out following the first session of the Integrated Product Development Summer School (ipdISS14). The first part of this summer school was held in Malta in May 2014. The second part was held in Magdeburg in September. The team was comprised of six members from five EU institutions and the aim of the project was develop a cleaning solution for delicate objects by using an Integrated Product Development methodology. The report presents the process in detail as well as important lessons learned. The final solution proposed, Cleaning Genie, is a cleaning add-on for cordless screwdrivers for the consumer market. Many households are lacking effective and cost efficient means of cleaning delicate objects, little did they know that the common cordless screwdriver that most of them have in their toolbox together with the affordable Cleaning Genie add-ons can solve their cleaning problems. Cleaning Genie is targeting an enormous consumer market by applying bundling and low price strategies.

Battery Electric Vehicles have been slow to diffuse on the international as well as the Swedish market. Existing literature have pointed to situational factors such as economical factors, size and performance to be of high importance for car purchasers in their choice of car. In this paper the authors investigates the apparent discrepancy between purchase price and the Total Cost of Ownership between Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles and Battery Electric Vehicles. The Total Cost of Ownership computation reveals that Battery Electric Vehicles can be cost competitive with Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles, a significant finding that could prove to be of importance for the diffusion of Battery Electric Vehicles, although further studies are needed to test car purchasers' knowledge regarding the Total Cost of Ownership analysis.