Modelling market diffusion of electric vehicles with real world driving data – German market and policy options

•Energy and battery prices have significant impact on PEV market evolution.•Germany’s goal of one million electric vehicles in 2020 is reachable.•Even in unfavourable conditions a minimum of 200,000 PEVs will be reached until 2020.•Commercial vehicles are the most promising group for a leverage effect in PEV adoption.•User acceptance and willingness to pay strongly affect PEV adoption. Plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) have the potential to reduce green house gas emissions from the transport sector. However, the limited electric range of PEVs could impede their market introduction. Still some potential users are willing to pay more for PEVs. The combined effect of these and other influencing factors as well as the resulting future market evolution are unclear. Here, we study the market evolution of PEVs in Germany until 2020. Our results reveal a great deal of uncertainty in the market evolution of PEVs due to external conditions and the users’ willingness to pay. We find the future share of PEVs in German passenger car stock to range from 0.4% to almost 3% by 2020. Energy prices have a large impact on PEV market evolution as a 25% increase in fuel prices would double the number of PEVs in stock by 2020 compared to a reference scenario. We find a special depreciation allowance for commercial vehicles and a subsidy of 1000Euro as the most effective and efficient monetary policy options. The high uncertainty of the market evolution implies that policies to foster market diffusion of PEVs should be dynamically adaptable to react to changing framework conditions.