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This study investigates the usability of electric vehicles (EVs) in a taxi company in Greater Stockholm, Sweden. By investigating cost and revenue data of both electric and conventional taxi vehicles, as well as by interviewing taxi drivers and carriers, an assessment has been made of the financial and operational implications of using EVs in a company's taxi fleet. Both the drivers' and the carriers' perspectives have been examined. The main findings are that the investigated e-taxis have a similar or lower Total Cost of Ownership and slightly higher profitability than the investigated conventional taxis. For taxi drivers, using e-taxis implies more advanced planning and revenue service time being sacrificed for charging. However, certain customers' preferences for EVs, as well as benefits such as corporate clients favoring e-taxis and a zero emission priority queuing system at Stockholm's main international airport (partly) compensate for time devoted to charging. In order to facilitate increased use of e-taxis, more fast charging facilities should become available at strategic locations. Besides that, there are signs that carriers' lack of information about the opportunities and consequences of shifting towards e-taxis hamper a wider deployment of e-taxis.

The aim of this paper is to explore how mainstream vehicle buyers perceive and apply Total Cost of Ownership in their vehicle choice process. All else equal, rational consumers ought to evaluate Total Cost of Ownership in order to acquire the real cost of owning a particular vehicle under consideration, unless bounded rationality is affecting their behavior. The results reveal that vehicle buyers generally are capable of understanding the relative size of individual costs that make up vehicle Total Cost of Ownership but fail to evaluate and apply multiple costs in their vehicle purchase process. Regression analysis exposes that income, educational level, stated importance of Total Cost of Ownership and the number of vehicles in the choice set have a positive association with the degree that consumers conduct an evaluation of vehicle Total Cost of Ownership. Failure to consider Total Cost of Ownership can lead to uneconomic vehicle choices, which is here labeled as the TCO paradox. This could have an especially negative effect on the diffusion of battery electric vehicles, which require a more detailed cost analysis in order to extract its low operating cost structure.

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