Research On Market Diffusion Process Of Electric Vehicles Based On Network Effect

In theory,electric vehicles are the future development direction of technology with theadvantages of high efficiency and low energy consumption.And as one of the seven strategic emerging industries,EVs also play a very important role in strategic level.But in practice,conventional vehicles still firmly occupy the market due to their advantages in terms of production costs and prices.The limited market demand is now the key factor restricting the/development of EV industry,and how to cultivate the market becomes an important problem to be solved urgently in the evolution of EV industry.In order to gain a deeper understanding of the diffusion process of the EV market,this paper made the following efforts: Firstly,the characteristics of the network effects in automobile industry are analyzed and its existence is tested.Then,the consumers' social network in the auto market is portrayed using small-world network structure and scale-free network structure respectively with the help of complex network theory.To stimulate the evolution process of the EV industry under different network structure,a decision-making model including both heterogeneous manufacturers and consumers is constructed based on ABM framework.Finally,the different effects of consumption subsidies policy and charging infrastructure construction policy on EV industry are discussed.The results show that: there exists both direct and indirect network effect separately relating to user's size and charging infrastructure in the auto industry;in the evolution process of auto industry,the gap between the initial user scales lead to a strong "lock-in effect" in the development of conventional vehicles,leaving a very limited market share to EVs even when the price of EV decreased and the performance improved in the late period;in the small-world network,consumers who purchase EV can quickly form dense communities,but the connectivity between communities is not strong,showing a "respectively development" trend and insufficient growth potential in the latter period;the aggregation phenomenon between EV users in the scale-free network is not as obvious as that in the small-world network,the time for consumers' to form a community is longer,but the connectivity between each community is stronger,which results in a "sectors-connecting development " trend and large growth potential in the later period;consumption subsidies policy and charging infrastructure construction policy can both promote the purchase of EV effectively under certain intensity,and there is a clear positive correlation between the effect and strength of the policy;consumption subsidies policy can prompt consumers to purchase EV without any delay,but the cost of per unit new consumer is higher due to the inability to identify potential consumers effectively;the effectiveness of the charging infrastructure construction policy has a certain time lag,but being the carrier of the indirect network effect,the charging facilities areimportant supplement to the direct network effect,which can stimulate consumers' spontaneous purchase and the development of EV industry,and achieve a better market promotion effect with lower cost.