作者
David Ross Keith
发表日期
2012
机构
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
简介
Despite growing energy security and environmental concerns about dependence on oil as a transportation fuel, gasoline remains the overwhelmingly dominant fuel used by the US automotive fleet. Numerous previous efforts to introduce alternative fuel vehicles (AFVs) fueled by hydrogen, biofuels and electricity have failed, and significant barriers to a rapid transition to AFVs remain. One technology that has achieved considerable success in the US is the gasoline hybrid-electric vehicle (HEV), which integrate gasoline and electric powertrain components to significantly improve the efficiency of gasoline use. Since their introduction in 1999, over 2 million HEVs have been sold in the US, with more than 30 HEV models available to consumers today. In this dissertation I explore the dynamics of adoption of HEVs, examining factors influencing consumer adoption of HEVs to date, and, looking forward, the role of HEVs in the emerging market for plug-in electric vehicles (EVs). In Essay 1, I examine the market for the iconic Toyota Prius HEV. While more than 1 million Prius vehicles have been sold in the US, this market has been characterized by long wait lists at Toyota dealerships, evidence of supply constraints influencing the diffusion process. The innovation diffusion literature says relatively little about supply constraints, representing diffusion as a fundamentally demand-side process. Here I develop a model of innovation diffusion that incorporates production capacity and dealer inventory. Inclusion of supply constraints improves the explanatory power of the model in the Prius case, and demonstrates that the failure to model supply constraints can …
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