Small hauliers' perception of battery electric vehicles : An investigation of opportunities, barriers and potential ownership models

Sammanfattning: Today, one third of Sweden’s total greenhouse gas emissions come from domestic transport. To reduce these emissions, the Swedish government has set emission targets. To meet these and to avoid the global impacts of climate changes, the need for new technologies and new fuels to replace fossil fuels has become evident. One of the promising solutions to this is battery-electric vehicles.  The following study has been conducted with Scania, a Swedish truck and bus manufacturer that has chosen to invest more in electricity and today offers a heavy battery-electric truck with a range of 250 km. Today, only large companies have invested in heavy electric trucks while small hauliers, who own no more than ten trucks, are not yet sufficiently motivated to participate in the shift to electrification. Since small hauliers account a large share of freight transport, it is of interest to find out what opportunities and barriers they identify with an investment in battery electric trucks in order to include them in the transition. Furthermore, it is of interest to understand which ownership model can manage the barriers and thus facilitate the adaptation for the small hauliers. Therefore, the purpose of this study was formulated as follows:  To identify what small hauliers perceive as opportunities and barriers with the adoption to BEVs and investigate how they can adapt their ownership models to manage the barriers.  To facilitate the answering of the study’s purpose, it was broken down into research questions and associated sub-questions. Literature was used to create categories for opportunities and barriers: Environmental, Economic and Other for opportunities and Range, Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), Charging and Other for barriers. To answer the research questions, empirical data was collected through structured interviews with small hauliers. The data collected was compiled and analyzed to identify opportunities and barriers. The identified barriers were then used as input together with literature to analyze the ownership models owning, leasing and sharing against the most important barriers.  The findings related to the opportunities was that the small hauliers generally did not see many opportunities apart from reduced air pollution. Improved working environment for drivers was another opportunity mentioned. An increasing number of barriers were identified during the interviews. To summarize the barriers, many were linked to the range of a BEV. The small hauliers’ perceptions are that it is a big challenge to replace refueling with charging in their daily operations. This is based on the lack of natural charging opportunities, but also because there is not enough widespread charging infrastructure in the areas where they carry out their journeys in addition to the fact that the charging itself is too time consuming for the hauliers. Several of the barriers were also linked to the new cost structure with high investment costs and unknown residual value.  The most important barriers could be found in all categories. Of the eight most important barriers, four could be managed by ownership models. It was discussed that many barriers cannot be managed using ownership models but must be addressed in other ways. Of the three ownership models examined, leasing and sharing were able to manage the most barriers, with sharing being able to manage all of them to some extent. By joining a trucking center and sharing vehicles, small hauliers gain advantages enjoyed by larger hauliers, which simplifies their ability to participate in the transformation to electricity. The results indicate that the traditional ownership model, where small hauliers own 100% of their trucks, may not be the way forward to participate in the transition to electricity. The purpose could thus be answered by finding that sharing can manage the most important barriers perceived by small hauliers.