Breaking down barriers: Emerging issues on the pathway to full-scale electrification of the light-duty vehicle sector

A key pathway to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions in the light-duty vehicle (LDV) sector is the complete transition to electric vehicles (EV). However, the EV transition is facing new economic, technological, and infrastructure challenges, leading some EV owners to revert to internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEVs). In this direction, we assess emerging barriers in fully electrifying the LDV sector. We utilize interpretive structural modeling, and cross-impact matrix multiplication on inputs from an expert survey to evaluate the hierarchies between identified barriers. The findings suggest that charging inconvenience, uncertainties about EV upfront prices, operational cost savings, and shifts in policy away from fully banning sales of new ICEVs are among the top ‘linkage’ barriers. They directly impact other ‘dependent’ barriers, such as the EV ownership discontinuance. Experts also rated supply constraints in the critical metals market and the potential for an oligopoly in the international battery materials market as significant ‘independent’ barriers that influence both the ‘linkage’ and ‘dependent’ barriers. Building on these findings, we provide key takeaways for policy and industry discussions by examining how the most impactful ‘linkage’ barriers to full electrification in the LDV sector are playing out across different regions and how various stakeholders are responding. • Evaluated emerging barriers to full electrification of the light-duty vehicle sector. • Identified barrier hierarchies through multi-criteria decision-making analysis. • Electric vehicle discontinuance identified as a key dependent barrier to adoption. • Battery material supply constraints and market oligopoly are independent barriers. • Shift from banning new combustion engine vehicle sales is a linkage barrier.