ANNOUNCEMENTS
India is in need to establish sustainable infrastructure to curb rising pollution levels. In top 10 most polluted cities in world 8 are from India. This creates an alarming situation as rise in pollutants are a major cause of elevated heart and lungs ailments. Internal combustion engine vehicles are the major cause of pollution due to their burning of natural fuel thus releasing toxic gases. Electric vehicle is the most viable technological shift to curb pollution levels. EV’s compared to non EV’s tend to produce significantly very lower emissions. Even after such advantages of EV its adoption rate compared to an IC is comparatively low. There are certain factors which contribute to lower adoption rate such as higher price of EV’s, shorter driving range and lack of charging Infrastructure etc.
This study aims to explore such limitation in EV adoption in detail. Contingent valuation method (CVM) was used in this study to explore consumer’s willingness to pay given better environment performance and lower operating cost. Another, model too used CVM to assess consumers’ willingness to pay for charging infrastructure given proximity to charging station, congestion at station and charging speed. Ordered Probit model was used for estimation of responses received in both the models. Higher WTP for EV was significantly related to Age, Family Income and operating cost. Higher WTP for charging was associated significantly with connector preference and proximity and congestion. Policy suggestion offered were, advertisement of EV attributes to increase knowledge and capping difference between EV and IC price below INR 2,00,000.
Key Words: EV, IC, WTP
