The car of tomorrow : an assessment of alternative fuel vehicle technology and the use of policy instruments to facilitate the implementation

Abstract

This master’s thesis assesses different alternative fuels and fuel vehicles in a European context in short and medium term. We apply a contextualised GREET model to determine the energy usage, emissions and technological improvement of eight selected vehicles running on four different fuels. In addition we use a payback analysis to determine the payback period of each alternative. The results show that diesel vehicles outperform petrol vehicles. Plug-in hybrids look promising, but their efficiency improvement from 2010 to 2020 is modest compared to some of the other technologies. The battery electric vehicle and fuel cell vehicle are the cleaner and more efficient technologies in 2020, however the FCV involves a high degree of uncertainty within our timeframe. We therefore select HEV, PHEV and BEV as our preferred alternatives. Using a stakeholder approach, we identify barriers to the implementation of our selected technologies. To overcome these barriers we apply a selection of policy options.