Citation

Murugan M, Marisamynathan S. Case Stud. Transp. Policy 2022; 10(3): 1673-1685.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2022, World Conference on Transport Research Society, Publisher Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.cstp.2022.06.006

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Electric vehicles are introduced in India as an alternative to internal combustion engine vehicles to mitigate environmental pollution and ensure energy security by reducing oil imports. The central and state governments have announced several incentives/subsidies for electric vehicle adopters, but India's present electric vehicle sales are significantly less than other countries. In the initial stage to improve electric vehicle penetration, the electric bike needs to be given more importance because two-wheelers share more than seventy-nine percent of vehicle numbers on the Indian roads. Thus, this study aims to identify factors that significantly affect the user's willingness to adopt electric bikes and develop a user-mode choice model to shift from a conventional two-wheeler to an electric bike. Also, this study identifies suitable policy options to encourage electric bike use in India. For this purpose, 712 samples were collected from road users in Ahmedabad and used for the analysis. Pearson correlation, Kendall's Tau-b, Spearman's rho correlations, and odds ratio tests were used to study the significant influence of respondents' socio-economic characteristics, travel information, and electric bike attributes on electric bike adoption. The ordered probit model was used to estimate the user's mode shift behavior from a conventional two-wheeler to an electric bike. Further, the Analytic Hierarchy Process method was adopted to prioritize the alternative policies to encourage electric bike adoption. This study finds that gender, travel distance, fuel expenditure, and motivating factors of using electric bikes significantly influences the users' mode shift behavior to adopt electric vehicles. The policy analysis shows that introducing high-speed electric bikes with improved battery technology, road and vehicle tax exemption on electric bike purchases, and providing proper charging facilities are the most preferred policies by the users. Implementing these policies across the country would significantly help reduce the consumer's risk perception of electric bikes and improve electric vehicle adoption in India.

Language: en

Keywords

Analytical Hierarchy Process; Electric bike; Electric Vehicle Policy; Mode shift; Ordered Probit Model