I was more than halfway through my first year as PhD student when I attended this conference and felt certain that I had my research in the bag.
The Summit was held in a great location at Oxford University, the speakers were interesting and covered a broad variety of EV related topics and the conference organisers made networking a priority with regular networking breaks and networking facilitators to help you locate people you were hoping to speak to.
There were some great insights from the likes of Uber with regards to their plans to contribute to the cleaner air initiative and it was also great to hear from some of the OEMs regarding some of their wins and equally some of their future challenges as they also work to provide us with ultra low emission vehicles.
It was actually while networking that I had my ‘aha’ moment. I was speaking with someone who mentioned that he had just put down his deposit on a new EV and was effectively just waiting to hear when it would be ready. Apparently this is common practice when purchasing a new car but I’ve genuinely never bought a brand new car so it was news to me. As it would be for apparently 2/3 of drivers in the UK who purchase second hand vehicles.
This coupled with the fact that I read a journal on the way to the conference that compared the differences in motivation for EVs depending on high end and low end vehicles – where low end was £30k – which got me wondering if the current policies are currently only reaching drivers on the higher end and whether or not the real gem in my research would be found if I narrowed my research ever so slightly to focus on used car drivers.
Since the summit I have focused my reading on things like bias and utilitarianism in the hopes that I can build a strong case for broader suite of EV policy interventions.
Next steps?
Prepare for my MPhil to PhD transfer.
Prepare for my lightning talk at the BECC