  Electric vehicles (EVs) are increasingly becoming popular as a viable means
of transportation for the future. The use of EVs may help to provide better
climatic conditions in urban areas with a pocket friendly cost for
transportation to the consumers throughout its life. EVs enact as a boon to the
society by providing zero tailpipe emissions, better comfort, low lifecycle
cost and higher connectivity. The article aims to provide scientific
information through the literature across various aspects of EVs in their
lifetime and thus, assist the scholarly community and various organisations to
understand the impact of EVs. In this study we have gathered information from
the articles published in SCOPUS database and through grey literature with the
focus of information post 2009. After identification of various factors while
purchasing the vehicle, the total cost of ownership (TCO) for vehicles is
calculated and their average TCO for each segment is considered for the study.
Following that, we investigate the ranking of EVs, vehicles powered by internal
combustion engines (ICEVs), and hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) in a variety of
price segments by employing a combination of two different multi-criteria
decision making (MCDM) techniques. Initially, best-worst method (BWM) is used
to determine the weights of each of the identified criterion, which is
thereafter, used in conjunction with the technique for order preference by
similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) to compute the rank of the available
alternatives using BWM. The ranking obtained clearly indicates that EVs should
be first purchase choice of the consumers, followed by HEVs and ICEVs
respectively. Thus, the results help us conclude that EVs enact as a
sustainable means of transport for the future.
