Overview
The "Market- and User-Monitoring Electric Mobility" is a crucial part of the "Swiss Forum for Electric Mobility", which was established in 2009. As a national competence centre and open platform for all Swiss E-Mobility stakeholders, the Forum, amongst others, seeks to determine user-profiles and to refine ongoing research with regards to electric mobility.
The overarching goal of the project is to provide the scientific foundation for the activities undertaken by the Forum. More specifically, the project will conduct market-analysis and generate user-profiles, in order to determine the decisive demand-structures within the electric mobility market. The results will be used, applied and communicated by the forum, in order to present supply-perspectives and business-models to manufacturers, service-providers and political decision-makers. More importantly, transport-users will receive individualized recommendations and practical advice enabling easy access to electric mobility services and products. An additional crucial aspect of this research project is a target-group oriented scrutiny of ongoing and future research in the field of electric mobility.
The research project uses basically four approaches through which the research subject to be processed:
1. Internet: Using the eMotionKit findings from the information provided by the user are obtained. This is about mobility needs, the personal conditions, the limit of the concessions and the expectations of products and services. About the well-connected with the motorists partners (especially TCS) ensures that the platform is to be sufficiently familiar and a significant number of users will be using the tool. The Internet platform is also for passive transmission of content in terms of a knowledge database.
2. Research reports: Existing and created under the project or research project research reports are collected, analysed separately and in the context of other results. Where gaps are identified, the project will work to close it.
3. Networking with all stakeholders: The good networking among stakeholders of the project and the research project ensures the flow of information. Results are discussed with practitioners and analysed for their practicality. A regular exchange between research and application guarantees a high utility of results.
4. Annual Forum: As part of the annual big event the results and progress are also with the public and in particular discussed critics. Findings from this event should - if possible - incorporated into the research project or are used to define complementary research projects.
Funding
Results
The MANUEL project in which an “Electro-mobility market and user monitoring” study was conducted by the Mobility Academy between 2011 and 2014 as part of the Swiss Forum on Electro-mobility not only provides an analytical insight into the determinants of electro-mobility but also looks ahead to the prospects for the development of plug-in automobiles in Switzerland. Going forward into the future of electro-mobility, MANUEL shows how electrically powered individual transport can be transformed in coming years from an experimental solution for motorists who are keen on innovation and technology to become instead a routine application area open to a majority of people for sustainable mobility products and services. Three major paths can be detected for MANUEL followers (and the readers of this report) leading from the present into a future of electric vehicles.
The first path towards transformation breaks down the monetary barriers which still stand in the way of potential users of electric cars in the current phase of electro-mobility development but will become less of an obstacle in years to come. On the basis of a secondary analysis of existing studies MANUEL shows how the future price trend for batteries, vehicles and the infrastructure enables investment and operating costs to be cut for users and how accompanying measures of financial promotion by the public authorities could accelerate the development of the market for electro-mobility in Switzerland.
The second path leads via the successive installation of charging points open to the public and the development of a new electro-mobile service market which permits integration free from all friction and limitations of the electric vehicle into the everyday mobility of Swiss motorists.
On the third path towards transformation from convention to electrical vehicular mobility in Switzerland the potential user must be given greater help and information; real information deficits must be made good and subjective fears concerning the limited vehicle range overcome. This path can best be travelled in the electric car itself because only as a result of a “genuine electrical experience” will a majority of potential electric vehicle drivers make the leap forward to the routine use of such vehicles.
MANUEL goes on to show that these paths will be taken and travelled in coming years by all kinds of different users and user groups. Today just a few thousand innovators have chosen such routes without the benefit of m