Keywords: electric vehicle, charging square, discrete choice experiment, parking, public charging
With policies restricting the sales of fossil-fuel vehicles, more electric vehicles are going to be sold on the Dutch car market. In urban environments, electric vehicles will need a place to charge and since fewer residents in urban environments have the possibility to charge on private property, more electric vehicle drivers are in need of a public charging location. An efficient way to provide public charging in urban residential environments is through public charging squares. In order to evaluate different
locations for charging squares, it is key to know which user preferences are most important to be included in a tool that evaluates the different locations. Therefore, this study provides new information related to user preferences when deciding on a location to charge an electric vehicle. In order to identify user preferences, a stated choice experiment has been used to determine the most important user preferences when deciding on a location to charge an electric vehicle in urban environments. In order to determine the most important aspects when deciding on a public charging location, the results of the stated choice experiment are analyzed using a Multinomial Logit model. Additionally, a Latent Class model is estimated in order to check for the existence of different clusters of respondents given a preset number of classes. The main findings presented in this thesis show that when deciding which public charging location to use in an urban environment, cost have the largest impact on the location decision according to the respondents participating in this study. Other significant aspects which influence the location decision are walking distance, charge certainty and not having to relocate the electric vehicle once the battery is completely charged.