Abstract:

Electrification of mobility exceeds personal transport to increasingly focus on particular segments such as city logistics and taxis. This paper provides an example of innovative policy practices put in place to stimulate a commercial mobility sector to become electric. These commercial mobility segments have different motives to purchase a full electric vehicle and require a particular approach to incentivize and facilitate the transition towards electric mobility. A case where a municipality was successful in stimulating the transition to electric mobility is the taxi sector in the city of Amsterdam. Using results from a survey study (n = 300), this paper analyses the differences in characteristics between taxi drivers that either have or do not have interest in purchasing a full electric taxi vehicle. Concerning situational factors, taxi drivers interested in purchasing an FEV showed a higher acceptance of the covenant than their colleagues not interested in purchasing an FEV and also rated the three incentives included in the study as more attractive.  Results show a low intention across the sample to adopt a full electric vehicle and no statistically significant differences in demographics between the two groups. Differences were found between the level of acceptability of the covenant, the rated attractiveness of the incentives, the ratings of full electric vehicle attributes and the consultation of objective and social information sources. These findings can be utilised by policymakers to create new incentives that focus on specific themes that are now driving interest in a fully electric taxi vehicle, and policymakers must understand taxi driver adoption trends in order to maximise aid and regulatory regimes.