The adoption of electric vehicles in public transport services: Space, path dependency and embeddedness: The Venice case

The adoption of electric vehicles in public transport will be essential for the transition of the world's economies toward more sustainable mobility. For this reason, we need an in-depth understanding of the variables that affect the choice of a specific electric technology for public transport: successful implementation of electric transport is highly sensitive to operational context and there could be different types of challenges regarding the electrification of public transport in our cities. This study, by analysing the introduction process of fully electric buses and hybrid vaporetti in the Venice Municipality, contributes to the existing debate on EV adoption. The study explores why and how space can generate path dependency and embeddedness moving from an ICE public transport mobility service toward an electrified mobility service and identifies the specific space attributes that affect the adoption of electric vehicles for public transport. Findings help managers and policymakers in understanding which type of technological innovation, why and how, can support sustainable mobility in each place, while at the same time preserving existing service levels. Interestingly, our findings suggest that space availability in cities can generate barriers of entry for fully electric vehicles, especially for most performing vehicles with higher range. • We investigate why and how space can generate path dependency and embeddedness moving from an ICE public transport mobility service toward an electrified mobility service. • We analyze the introduction process of electric transport in Venice where the same service provider, in the same years, had to select which EV technology to adopt in the diverse territories of the Venice municipality, which have multifaced characteristics. • The results suggest that space availability can generate barriers of entry for fully electric vehicles, especially for most performing vehicles with higher autonomy. • Our study suggests that knowing the attributes of spaces that affect the adoption of a technology allows applying the new technology to most of its potential and offering stakeholders and policymakers effective business cases that can guide their action.