A Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Based Analysis to Identify the Barries to Large-Scale Electric Vehicle Adoption in Thailand

Electric vehicles (EVs) are increasingly sustainable transportation solutions, yet their adoption faces several barriers. Despite growing global interest, consumer skepticism persists due to the dominance of internal combustion vehicles. In Thailand’s EV strategy, nine key challenges were identified, with cost-related factors like investment, resale value, and maintenance alongside technical issues, including battery-related issues, availability of servicing, and performance-related issues. The remaining issues correspond to policy issues like public infrastructure, private infrastructure, and financing. Determining the most impactful barriers to large-scale EV adoption is vital. Multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methodology can be applied to make informed decision-making problems involving numerous conflicting issues by calculating the relative weights of each alternative. This study uses an analytical hierarchical process (AHP) as an MCDM analytical tool. The result shows that investment and resale costs are the most important barriers among all nine issues, as listed with about 42% weightage, followed by maintenance cost with 18%. Battery-related issues, electricity tariffs, and lack of public infrastructure also pose a significant threat to EV adoption. Surprisingly, financing, including direct buyers’ subsidies, is ranked lowest. The result suggests a better approach would be to develop an EV industry environment and create an economy of scale to make EVs more affordable.