Analyses of willingness-to-pay and elasticity of electric vehicle demand in Kenya

Stated choice experiments are used to analyse Willingness-to-Pay (WTP) and elasticity of Electric Vehicle (EV) demand in urban/suburban Kenya, including Electric-Two-Wheelers (E2Ws) and Electric-Four-Wheelers (E4Ws). Results suggest consumers are willing to pay 1.5% over the E4W purchase price for every additional 10 km of driving range and 1.4% to reduce recharging time by 10 minutes. Both results are similar to, though lower than, the WTP of consumers in High-Income Countries approximately 10 years ago. Furthermore, we analyse the heterogeneity in WTP between genders, and between current vehicle owners and first-time buyers, and estimate the elasticities of EV demand under different policies. We find, for instance, that elasticity of demand in response to maintenance cost is higher than that due to purchase price; and that men have higher WTP for EV range, whereas women have higher WTP for fast charging. Results in this paper can provide evidence for developing informed and equitable electrification strategies in countries of sub-Saharan Africa.