Abstract

Long-term and mid-term mobility of people involves on the one hand decisions about their residential locations and the corresponding moves. At the same time, the places of education and employment play an important role. On the other hand the ownership of mobility tools, such as cars and different public transport season tickets, is a complementary element in this process, which also binds substantial resources. These two aspects of mobility behaviour are closely connected to one another. A longitudinal perspective on these relationships is available from people's life courses, which link different dimensions of life together. Besides the personal and familial history, locations of residence, education and employment as well as the ownership of mobility tools can be taken into account. These life course dimensions are usually not independent from one another. Events in one area are frequently connected to changes in other areas. At the same time, this longitudinal approach provides the possibility to observe developments over time. In order to study the dynamics of long-term and mid-term mobility decisions, a longitudinal survey covering the 20-year period from 1985 to 2004 was carried out at the beginning of 2005 in a stratified sample of municipalities in the Zurich region, Switzerland. The paper shows that there exists a strong interrelation between the two examined aspects of long-term and mid-term mobility. The residential mobility is influenced by the ownership of the different mobility tools, and vice versa. Thereby the mobility tool ownership remains comparably stable over longer periods of time. Concerning the ownership of the various mobility tools, the analyses indicate that car ownership and public transport season ticket ownership substitute one another. During the life course car ownership is highest among those who are 35 to 55 years old today. At the same time, men have noticeably more frequently a car at their disposal than women of the same age. Concerning the ownership of national and regional season tickets, the opposite trend is visible. ISSN:0386-1112 ISSN:2210-4240

Abstract

Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) are an effective intermediate vehicle technology option in the long-term transition pathway towards light-duty vehicle electrification. Their net environmental impact is evaluated using the performance metric Utility Factor (UF), which quantifies the fraction of vehicle miles traveled (VMT) on electricity. There are concerns about the gap between Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sticker label and real-world UF due to the inability of test cycles to represent actual driving conditions and assumptions about their driving and charging differing from their actual usage patterns. Using multi-year longitudinal data from 153 PHEVs (11&ndash 53 miles all-electric range) in California, this paper systematically evaluates how observed driving and charging, energy consumption, and UF differs from sticker label expectations. Principal Components Analysis and regression model results indicated that UF of short-range PHEVs (less than 20-mile range) was lower than label expectations mainly due to higher annual VMT and high-speed driving. Long-distance travel and high-speed driving were the major reasons for the lower UF of longer-range PHEVs (at least 35-mile range) compared to label values. Enhancing charging infrastructure access at both home and away locations, and increasing the frequency of home charging, improves the UF of short-range and longer-range PHEVs respectively. Document type: Article