Establishing the Transferability of Best Practice in EV Policy across EU Borders

In supporting the growth of the electric vehicle market within Europe, incentives will play a significant role. The paper presents the case that the success of incentives is contextualised. On the basis of 110 expert responses from Austria, Germany, Spain and the UK, the paper evaluates the effectiveness of different incentives, financial and non-financial, under different market and policy environments. Although incentives are invariably perceived as effective by the expert respondents, it is observed that the distribution in acceptance levels was dependent on the region in which they have been deployed. Interrogation of the supporting commentary provided the basis for the interpretation of these differences. The research therefore makes a positive contribution to the understanding of the linkage between the success in electric vehicle incentives and regional market framework and policy environments. This opens the door for best practice transferability of incentives and optimally combining different incentives dependent on the social and institutional environments into which they are deployed.