Social Aspects of Electric Vehicles Research—Trends and Relations to Sustainable Development Goals

Abstract

E-mobility sustainability assessment is becoming more comprehensive with research integrating social aspects without focusing only on technical, economic, and/or environmental perspectives. The transportation sector is indeed one of the leading and most challenging greenhouse gas polluters, and e-mobility is seen as one of the potential solutions; however, a social perspective must be further investigated to improve the perception of and acceptance of electric vehicles. This could consequently lead to the European Green Deal’s holy grail: faster decarbonization of the transportation sector. Another way to achieve it is by promoting more comprehensive sustainable development goals. Therefore, this paper combines a systematic review of recent research with research emphasis focused on social aspects of electric vehicles and their interconnection with specific UN Sustainable Development Goals. By knowing the current research focus mainly related with “perception” of electric vehicles and assessing their social “impact” as well as an emerging area of “user experience” and their relations with UN Sustainable Development Goals enables better insight on the current and future directions of electric vehicle social sustainability research. The current priority is identified as “climate actions”. Increasingly important “sustainable cities and communities” shows potential for becoming one of the future research, policy, and community priorities.

Sustainability Orientation and Focus in Logistics and Supply Chains

“…This is one reason why new research in the area of SDGs with a purpose and goal to find new insights, regardless of the study area, is crucial. This research focuses on the logistics and supply chain sector but might also be related to other cases, for example, stakeholder perception towards hydrogen energy [153], electric vehicles [154], etc.…”

Propensity to Choose Electric Vehicles in Cross-Border Alpine Regions

“…The European Green Deal [3] declared the need to provide "more affordable, accessible, healthier and cleaner alternatives" to the current mobility practices of European citizens to achieve sustainable transport means. Citizens and, more broadly, all users have a central role in the transition towards sustainable mobility [33]. Hence, this research investigates the propensity to choose an EV, exploring how a citizen contributes to the transition towards sustainable mobility, which sociodemographic characteristics show who chooses an EV, which current mobility habits exist, and how these habits affect the propensity to adopt EVs.…”

Socio-Economic Barriers to Adoption of Electric Vehicles in South Africa: Case Study of the Gauteng Province

“…In the context of what has been discussed in the preceding paragraph on the challenges of ever-increasing carbon emissions, many studies indicate that the need to change the propulsion system and convert to electric vehicles (EVs) presents the world with a solution to attain a sustainable future [6][7][8][9][10]. A lot of research has focused on electrifying passenger cars as they contribute to over 90% of the transport emissions.…”

“…Therefore, this class presents an opportunity for massive gains in the fight against the increasing greenhouse gas effect [11]. There are a number of studies all over the world that have shown that conversion to EVs would mitigate GHG emissions from the transport sector [10,12,13]. Electric vehicles available in the current market differ according to their degree of hybridization, starting with hybrid vehicles with limited battery power to fully-electric vehicles with enhanced battery power, corresponding to varying mitigation potential [14].…”