  Battery electric vehicles (BEVs) are now clearly a promising candidate in
addressing the environmental problems associated with conventional internal
combustion engine vehicles (ICEVs). However, BEVs, unlike ICEVs, are still not
widely accepted in the automobile market but continuing technological change
could overcome this barrier. The aim of this study is to assess and forecast
whether and when design changes and technological improvements related to major
challenges in driving range and battery cost will make the user value of BEVs
greater than the user value of ICEVs. Specifically, we estimate the relative
user value of BEVs and ICEVs resulting after design modifications to achieve
different driving ranges by considering the engineering trade-offs based on a
vehicle simulation. Then, we analyze when the relative user value of BEVs is
expected to exceed ICEVs as the energy density and cost of batteries improve
because of ongoing technological change. Our analysis demonstrates that the
relative value of BEVs is lower than that of ICEVs because BEVs have high
battery cost and high cost of time spent recharging despite high torque, high
fuel efficiency, and low fuel cost. Moreover, we found the relative value
differences between BEVs and ICEVs are found to be less in high performance
large cars than in low performance compact cars because BEVs can achieve high
acceleration performance more easily than ICEVs. In addition, this study
predicts that in approximately 2050, high performance large BEVs could have
higher relative value than high performance large ICEVs because of
technological improvements in batteries; however low performance compact BEVs
are still very likely to have significantly lower user value than comparable
ICEVs until well beyond 2050.
