Electric vehicles are an increasingly attractive option for households to reduce carbon emissions, especially when they are powered by renewable energy. In this paper we report the results of an 18-month field trial investigating the desirability and feasibility of powering electric vehicles (EVs) with domestic solar electricity. Based on extensive collection of data from 7 households including over 75,000 miles of daily EV use, home electricity consumption and generation, and in-depth interviews with householders we develop a detailed understanding of what drives EV decisions in households, quantify to what extent our participating households currently power their EVs with solar electricity, and investigate how feasible the vision of “self-sustaining electric mobility” is. We use this understanding to draw implications for future research into supporting emerging practices of EV drivers.

https://doi.org/10.1145/2750858.2807546

Cite Bibtex

@inproceedings{10.1145/2750858.2807546,
    author = {Bourgeois, Jacky and Foell, Stefan and Kortuem, Gerd and Price, Blaine A. and van der Linden, Janet and Elbanhawy, Eiman Y. and Rimmer, Christopher},
    title = {Harvesting Green Miles from My Roof: An Investigation into Self-Sufficient Mobility with Electric Vehicles},
    year = {2015},
    isbn = {9781450335744},
    publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
    address = {New York, NY, USA},
    url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/2750858.2807546},
    doi = {10.1145/2750858.2807546},
    abstract = {Electric vehicles are an increasingly attractive option for households to reduce carbon
    emissions, especially when they are powered by renewable energy. In this paper we
    report the results of an 18-month field trial investigating the desirability and feasibility
    of powering electric vehicles (EVs) with domestic solar electricity. Based on extensive
    collection of data from 7 households including over 75,000 miles of daily EV use,
    home electricity consumption and generation, and in-depth interviews with householders
    we develop a detailed understanding of what drives EV decisions in households, quantify
    to what extent our participating households currently power their EVs with solar electricity,
    and investigate how feasible the vision of "self-sustaining electric mobility" is.
    We use this understanding to draw implications for future research into supporting
    emerging practices of EV drivers.},
    booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2015 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing},
    pages = {1065–1076},
    numpages = {12},
    keywords = {microgeneration, domestic charging, solar electricity, data mining, sustainability, user study, electric vehicle},
    location = {Osaka, Japan},
    series = {UbiComp '15}
}