Understanding the Charging and Range Behaviour of Current Users of Battery Electric Vehicles

With regard to constantly increasing environmental concerns, the change in the automotive sector from combustion vehicles to electric vehicles is becoming more and more necessary. However, range anxiety is still a major obstacle to the rapid market penetration of electric vehicles, as the fear of running out of power before reaching an available charging station is still quite present despite the expansion of the charging infrastructure within the last few years. In order to encounter this fear, this study aims to first understand how users interact with the range of their battery electric car and what variables affect their charging behaviour. Based on the data of two different online surveys, we found that while public charging has increased in recent years, most users of our sample still mainly charge at home and there is still a large proportion of users who do little to no public charging at all. Concerning range interaction, in our sample we found that higher driving experience is linked to a higher subjective range competence. Also, for our sample, a regression analysis revealed that subjective range competence is positively correlated with the users’ comfortable range.