Electric Vehicles in Finland - Manufacturers' Contentions vs Consumers' Perception

Abstract

Electric vehicles are an integral part of the sustainability movement, helping to control emissions. Developed in the last century, the concept has gained popularity in recent times but struggles to be competitive in the automotive market with Internal Combustion Engines. There are a lot of hurdles that hinder the shift to elec-tric transport, especially in a country like Finland. To understand how the public in Finland can adopt it and what role manufacturers can play in this, it is important to gain a comprehensive overview of the current adoption trends in the country to identify the challenges associated with it and which of these can be ad-dressed. Concerning the above-mentioned issue, it was decided to explore the perspectives of consumers and manufacturers of EVs in the country. To achieve the goal, the current state of adoption of EVs in Finland was examined as well as the trends and the concerns of the consumers of EVs in comparison to the solutions from the manufacturers.

As for the implementation methodology, the Mixed method approach was applied. Thus, both quantitative and qualitative data were collected and analyzed. A survey was created and run through 84 members of the public in Finland.

The information obtained from the analysis of the primary and secondary data allowed us to review and un-derstand the wants of the people and the efforts of the manufacturers to provide for these wants. It was re-vealed that the manufacturers have responded to the wants, yet the actual number of EV users remains a minority. This is due to the existence of a number of limitations with the technology and limited charging in-frastructure. Addressing these issues would boost the sales growth of EVs in Finland. In general, it is believed by many experts that EVs will be able to make up for the majority in the road transport sector with better in-frastructure and efficient technology.