The potential market for non-gasoline-powered automobiles: Fid-Bau Portal

The potential market for non-gasoline-powered automobiles

Train, Kenneth

Abstract This paper presents estimates of what the market share for several non-gasoline-powered automobiles would be in the years 2000 and 2025 if no large changes occur in fuel prices, taxes, consumers' attitudes or regulations affecting the automabile market. As such, the estimates serve as “base-case” forecasts from which changes in these factors can be analyzed. Several types of non-gasoline-powered automobiles are included in the analysis: battery-powered vehicles (both nickel-zinc and high-temperature batteries); a hybrid (with both a battery motor and a gas engine in one vehicle); a hydrogen vehicle (which ignites hydrogen instead of gas); and a vehicle which is powered by the reaction of aluminum into energy and oxidation products. Engineers at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory specified the probable characteristics of the vehicles, based on “most-likely” and “optimistic” outcomes of research and development. With these characteristics as input, a model of the type of automobile which households would choose to own was used to predict the share of the auto market which each of the vehicles would capture under the “base-case” assumptions. It was forecast the nickel-zinc battery vehicle would capture very little of the market, but that the market share for high-temperature-battery vehicles would be larger. Also, the hybrid and aluminum-reaction vehicles were forecast to capture a significant share, while the hydrogen-powered vehicle was not. The forecasts for the battery-operated vehicles were compared to those obtained by SRI and Mathtech, and it was found that, while SRI's forecasts are close to those obtained herein, Mathtech's forecasts are much higher. Promising avenues for future research are discussed.