Easy mobility incentives for electric vehicles: Best practices based on an international expert survey

1,72% of the newly registered Belgian vehicles in 2016 were plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) or battery electric vehicles (BEV) (Hooftman et al, 2017). This puts Belgium in the list of 10 countries that passed the 1% electric vehicle market penetration threshold in 2016 (Bloomberg New Energy Agency, 2017). With a financial incentive already in place for private car buyers in the region Flanders, more incentives are under study to accelerate the transition to an electrified fleet. Obviously, the policy makers aim to implement incentives which perform well on effectiveness and efficiency. We have first conducted an extensive secondary sources review on e-mobility incentives and next carried out an expert survey on a selection of the non-financial incentives. The following incentives are evaluated by the experts: roll-out of charging infrastructure, pilot and demonstration projects, parking incentives, communication campaigns, incentives for the usage of public charging infrastructure, incentives for charging at the work place, EV car sharing incentives and HOV lane usage for EVs. We report on best practices for these incentives in terms of the implementation and the timing, the pitfalls and benefits, and the advised accompanying incentives. In general, our results show that experts evaluate roll-out and usage incentives for charging infrastructure and parking incentives highly in terms of both cost effectiveness and cost-benefit ratio. Communication campaigns score well in terms of cost effectiveness, but poorly on cost-benefit ratio; whereas the opposite is true for charging at the work place. The best practices and insight on impact of these easy mobility incentives will be used by policy makers to further develop the strategy for an accelarated uptake of cleaner vehicles.