Essay System Innovations and Strategic Niche Management

GreenCab Utrecht Electric Taxi Experiment

Mauricio van den Berg(0747842) and Paul Scheer(0577619) April 2011

Description of experiment

In this work, we are going to look into electric cars in the Netherlands. In order to do this, we decided to look at an experiment instead of analyzing the complete niche, because this is much too broad for the scope of this work. A specific project with electric cars has been started in Utrecht in January 2011. This project is called GreenCab Utrecht and the project consists of a taxi service using electric vehicles (the cab fares are equal to those of regular taxis). Currently there are 6 electric taxis on the road and the plan is to increase this to 40 vehicles this year. Because electric cars are still in a stage of development, the technology by itself is not very attractive to consumer. Driving is different, there may be technological shortcomings and much is unknown about reliability and stability. Furthermore there is no supporting infrastructure yet (e.g. no charging points). Therefore, this experiment can only work in a protected space as we have seen throughout this course and in this case this is provided by a 2 million subsidy. Also, the province of Utrecht supports the project by providing charging points. This experiment can stimulate the introduction of electric cars by bringing the technology visible to the public, sharing experiences with customers and gaining trust for the technology. The subsidy for the experiment will end at the end of 2012 and the results of the experiment will then be analyzed to decide on the future course. The automotive industry (socio-technical regime) is a huge market and many actors are involved. For the experiment GreenCab has built a large actor network. Important actors and their contributions include: Prestige taxicentrale Nissan, Mitsubishi, Renault, Mercedes-Benz, Detroit-electric are the car manufacturers providing the cars. Kyotolease is donating the first 6 electric vehicles for the Prestige GreenCab experiment (3) Battery Manufacturers The Government is providing Prestige taxicentrale with a so-called proeftuinsubsidie(playground subsidy), which constists of 10 Million spread over this and eight other projects. Epyon created the charging stations that will be used Essent is responsible for placing charging stations around Utrecht (4) Stedin is the distribution network operator in the region. They will look at consequences of the charging points in the electricity grid. The municipality Utrecht wants 200 electric charging points before 2012 and is helping with the placement. TNO Automotive, Quipment, Kyotolease are researching various factors with GreenCab and looking at how to implement the cars on a larger scale. Taxi drivers The provincial government Utrecht has donated a quick charging pole. Goodyear (4) is a manufacturer of tires which were used that decrease friction and thus energy use. Users of taxis

Actors

Companies promoting the taxis by using them(hotel Mitland, Ballast Nedam, Capgemini Nederland, Triodos Bank) Non-profit organizations providing support (VNM, Stichting Nederland bereikbaar, Stichting Urgenda) There is cooperation with Prorail to realize charging through induction.

These actors can be placed in an actor network as shown in the figure below.

Expectations

As with all projects, also in the case of GreenCab, there are several expectations for the future. As we have seen in Van Lente (1993) and Geels and Raven (2006) expectations may be split up in three levels: the micro, meso and macro level. Van Lente (1993) states that expectations at the micro level are found on the local agenda and they include specific requirements. In this work, we study a specific experiment and therefore we believe that these expectations on the micro level are most important. Of course, expectations at the meso and macro level are also important (such as expectations about the oil reserves, oil prices, future technological breakthroughs, public feelings towards sustainability, government policies towards electric vehicles, etc.), but we have decided to place these expectations beyond the scope of this work. Instead, we found some specific expectations about this experiment, they are listed below: By the end of 2011 40 GreenCab-taxis will be in use By the end of 2012 there will be 200 charging points Parking for electric vehicles will be easier and cheaper There will be standing places for sustainable cabs

Induction (on standing places and in the road) will be used to charge the batteries GreenCabs will be used as NS zonetaxi by the end of 2011 The concept will become available as a franchise Fast charging points will be introduced (battery charge in 30 minutes) (4), (5), (6)

These expectations clearly fulfill the functions as Van Lente (7) describes them: they legitimize (justify) the project, they mobilize other actors and they try to reduce uncertainty. We also found that these expectations are largely shared amongst all the relevant actors: most of the expectations are the result of collaboration between GreenCab and other actors and probably because of these shared expectations, there are so many actors actively involved in this experiment. Finally, Van Lente also states that expectations work as actants. In this case this is also true: for example, the expectation that there will be 200 charging points by the end of 2012 will probably be achieved, because now this expectation can be viewed as a goal of the local government and other actors. They will now act, because this expectation is there! On the macro level we even found that Eurlings actually stated that he expected an additional 500 million of investments, because of the present day expectations about electric vehicles. This is more or less a second-order expectation, which we found very interesting, but it falls beyond the scope of this work.

Learning

Learning is mentioned as an important goal of this experiment by various actors (and especially by GreenCabs itself). Learning goals are: obtain more knowledge about maintenance, sensitivity to malfunctioning, battery management, impact on the electrical power grid and the impact on the logistics of the city centre of Utrecht. This information should help future experiments and therefore GreenCabs provide lectures throughout the Netherlands. This is also done because the possibility is explored to introduce the concept in more cities in the Netherlands, but also in Europe. (7) Also, learning is facilitated through the large actor network that GreenCab has built up. In the figure shown above, it can be seen how GreenCab collaborates with different actors on different aspects of the technology. However, we did not see how information is shared between other actors (without GreenCab). Presumably this information sharing does take place though. Also, we found that GreenCab learns from other experiments. For instance, Utrecht also has an experiment with an electric bus [9]. This bus is charged by induction at the bus stand at Utrecht Central Station. Prorail (also GreenCabs partner) is also involved in this experiment and in this way GreenCab profits from this experiment (but also vice versa). Finally, we found that GreenCab was originally launched in 2002, but at that time the project failed. This was due to the insufficient technology (the action radius was only 65 km and charging times were much too long), but now the project is much more promising, probably also due to learning from the previous launch. (6) The Automotive socio-technical regime is a very good example of a stable regime. The last 25 years hasnt shown many radical innovations in the industry (5)Cars from different manufacturers have been increasingly standardized. Most cars have the same basic design as design rules are aligned with user preferences. Changes in regulative rules have changed only due to independent parties (Governments or non-profit organizations) (6). However the increasing trend towards sustainability has caused some instability in the fossil fuel focused automotive regime. Hydrogen and electric cars are considered more seriously as a promising technology for the future and various hybrid petrol-electric cars have already hit the consumer market.

Barriers and opportunities for wider breakthrough

The niche of electric cars is however also quite stable. Expectations for the technology seem to be high as a future with clean technologies is seen as inevitable (7). For electric vehicles a broad actor network is necessary as various sectors have to work together closely. An infrastructure barely exists; battery life is a very important aspect and fast charging times are essential. In the case of our experiment the actornetwork is well developed, with Prestige communicating with research institutes and sending feedback to various actors. I assume this is comparable to the niche as a whole. Various barriers still exist for the breakthrough of electric vehicles, both technical and social. A goal of this experiment is to show potential users and companies whether the technology is mature enough to be used in a larger scale and to share experiences. It also contributes to the technological aspects by testing the vehicles in intensive real life conditions and longer term usage (8). According to Raven (9) a stable regime and niche puts the potential of the niche in the promising technology part of his 2x2 matrix. The most important part of a breakthrough would be a further destabilized socio-technical landscape. A goal for the company is to break through the idea of electrical vehicles and introduce the concept to the Benelux and eventually the rest of Europe. The idea behind this is to sell the concept as a franchise throughout Europe (10). Of course eventually they want every fossil fuel based vehicle to be replaced by electric vehicles but that is outside the scope of this experiment. Various presentations have been organized to share the experiences and concept of this project with governments of different countries. Conclusion Overall, we believe that this experiment has a large potential to contribute to the introduction of electric vehicles. The experiment is pretty much a stand alone project, but it does collaborate with other experiments. We found that there are many actors involved in the project from various sectors: government, business and NGOs are involved. Expectations are optimistic and more importantly, these expectations are put to use to stimulate the project further. It is stated that by replacing all buses and taxis in Utrecht by electric vehicles, this may reduce the NOx emissions by 25% (11). In this way, these experiments may have a large impact already, but more importantly, an infrastructure is built up for and by these experiments, which literally paves the road for future users. Also, learning is reasonably well organized and stimulated, there are many opportunities and although there are several barriers, the expectations are rather optimistic about these barriers. Based on our findings, we think that this experiment will be very successful indeed. This evaluation is summarized in the spider diagram below.
Learning 10 Actor Network 5 0 Expectations

Barriers

Opportunities

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