Consumer attitudes towards alternative vehicles

A quick glance at the automobile market suggests steady progress in the eco-efficiency of cars in recent decades. The conventional internal combustion engines (ice) in automobiles have improved in energy efficiency and reduced emissions. Moreover, a new market niche of alternative vehicles1 has emerged since 2000. By the spring of 2011, more than 3 million hybrid electric vehicles (hevs) had been sold worldwide and various car firms are currently introducing mass-produced electric car models. But do these trends really reflect a more fundamental change in demand for alternative car engines? or are the sales of eco-efficient vehicles merely the result of stricter environmental regulations on car emissions and environmental subsidies being offered for eco-efficient vehicles? in this chapter, we assess this question by reviewing six recent studies on car consumers (tns-emnid/autoscout24, 2004; lane, 2005; mytelka, 2008; nijhuis and van den burg, 2009; dijk, 2011; ozaki and sevastyanova, 2011).keywordsdiesel enginefuel economyfuel efficiencyhybrid electric vehicleconsumer attitudethese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.