On the real range-need of electric cars: a telematic-box data-driven analysis

Electric vehicles represent an effective weapon against pollution and global warming. In the last years, there has been an increasing effort by scientists, carmakers and governments to encourage the use of electric alternatives to conventional cars. Nevertheless, the market share of electric vehicles was still less than 2% in 2017, the main reason being the perception that battery ranges and infrastructures are not yet ready to satisfy the drivers' needs. In this paper, we exploit a massive dataset of 35M trips for over 60k vehicles in a metropolitan city of Italy, to show instead that electric vehicles are already a feasible solution. Specifically, we show that, even if no public infrastructure is available, only 4% of existing vehicles cannot be turned into an equivalent electric car when considering also high-end vehicles with long battery ranges.