Accelerating electric vehicles to mainstream consumers

The internationally peer-reviewed Energy System Modelling Environment (ESME) is the UK’s leading techno-economic whole system model – providing in-depth evidence for industry, academia, the Climate Change Committee and the UK Government. The ESME Transport model supports a range of stakeholders understand the infrastructure needs for the rapid expansion of electric cars and vans, with insight on consumers, batteries, charging and policy including taxation.

The model was developed during the three-year CVEI project (2016-2019), which delivered unique and detailed insight on mainstream consumer behaviour with electric vehicles and the changes needed of existing infrastructure. CVEI examined the barriers and motivators which influence consumers as they trialled a Battery Electric Vehicles (BEV) or a Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEV) and an equivalent internal combustion engine (ICE) car. The study gathered in-depth data from vehicles and charge points for 584,000 miles of journeys and 15,700 charge events, covering both home and public locations, while consumer surveys were undertaken to understand attitudes, perceptions and choices.

• Government and local authorities: Offering transport modelling and analysis to support policy-making by government and investment decision making by local authorities.
• Network operators and energy retailers: Modelling electric vehicle charging to support physical, digital and market systems requirements to target effective investment.
• Start-up and scale-up innovators: Modelling electric vehicles, consumer and energy integration needs to accelerate innovations to market.