Full Title: Vehicle Technology Deployment Pathways: An Examination of Timing and Investment Constraints
Author(s): Plotkin, S.; Stephens, T.; McManus, W.
Publisher(s): U.S. Department of Energy Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy
Publication Date: March 1, 2013
Full Text: Download Resource
Description (excerpt):
This is one of a series of reports produced as a result of the Transportation Energy Futures (TEF) project, a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)-sponsored multi-agency project initiated to identify underexplored strategies for abating greenhouse gases and reducing petroleum dependence related to transportation. The project was designed to consolidate existing transportation energy knowledge, advance analytic capacity-building, and uncover opportunities for sound strategic action.
Analysts may develop scenarios of the deployment of new vehicle technologies for a variety of reasons, ranging from pure thought exercises for hypothesizing about the future, to careful examinations of the possible outcomes of future policies or trends in technology, to examination of the feasibility of broad goals of reducing greenhouse gases and/or oil use. To establish a scenario’s plausibility, analysts will seek to make their underlying assumptions clear and to “reality check” the story they tell about technology development and deployment in the marketplace.
This report examines two aspects of “reality checking”—(1) whether the timing of the vehicle deployment envisioned by the scenarios corresponds to recognized limits to technology development and market penetration and (2) whether the investments that must be made for the scenario to unfold seem viable from the perspective of the investment community.