A Feasibility Test on Adopting Electric Vehicles to Serve as Taxis in Daejeon Metropolitan City of South Korea

Seoin Baek, Heetae Kim and Hyun Joon Chang
Additional contact information
Seoin Baek: Graduate School of Innovation and Technology, KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology), 2225, N5, 291, Daehak-ro, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon 34141, Korea
Heetae Kim: Graduate School of Innovation and Technology, KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology), 2225, N5, 291, Daehak-ro, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon 34141, Korea
Hyun Joon Chang: Graduate School of Innovation and Technology, KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology), 2225, N5, 291, Daehak-ro, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon 34141, Korea

Sustainability, 2016, vol. 8, issue 9, 1-18

Abstract: For realizing sustainable development, EV (Electric Vehicle) is currently considered as one of the most promising alternative due to its cleanness and inexhaustibility. However, the development and dissemination of EV has stagnated because it faces major constraints such as battery performance and an excessively long charging time. Thus, this study examined the feasibility of using EVs as taxis by analyzing real data from a pilot project in Daejeon, a metropolitan city in South Korea for proposing the effective way to adopt EV. To reflect reality and improve accuracy, we adopted scenarios and assumptions based on in-depth interviews with groups of experts. The resulting initial benefit-to-cost (B/C) ratio for EV taxis is approximately 0.4, which is quite low compared to 0.7 for traditional taxis. However, after incorporating some further assumptions into the calculation, the B/C ratio shifts to approximately 0.7, which is more appropriate for EV adoption. For this improvement to be achieved, the dissemination of a charging infrastructure, improvement of the business model and policy support is strongly needed. Limitations to this work and potential areas for future study are also fully discussed.

Keywords: electric vehicle; EV taxi; B/C analysis; feasibility test; sustainability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/8/9/964/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/8/9/964/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:8:y:2016:i:9:p:964-:d:78606

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().