Electric vehicles: Holy grail or fool's gold

Our analysis shows that there is likely to be minor short term risk or reward for electric utilities with respect to electric vehicle adoption, but also that significant long term value or risk exists, depending on how judiciously utilities manage pricing, charging and infrastructure. The margin of difference between profit and loss lies with the extent to which customer adoption is clustered, whether customers demand faster charging times, and how utilities are able to insure optimal charging times are met, relative to existing system utility peak loads. Customer car purchases are likely to cluster geographically within neighborhoods. Customers appear to want fast charging and convenience, albeit within some price tolerance. And once established, a robust PEV market may be difficult to keep up with, in terms of infrastructure additions, if ignored for too long. We share several methodological innovations and results to address these questions including Bass model market forecasting, consumer choice simulations, mapping spatial adoption and forecasting, and profitability assessment over various time and location based criteria.