Responsible
- Karsten Kieckhäfer
Project Partners
Initial Situation and Problem
Regulatory requirements concerning CO2 emissions of passenger cars as well as the expected scarcity of crude oil force car manufacturers to introduce alternative powertrain concepts. With regard to long term vehicle portfolio planning these powertrain concepts have to be assigned to current and future vehicle models that are offered to the market. To this end, the market potential and market penetration over time have to be estimated.
Objective and Approach
Against this background, the objective of the project is the development of a simulation tool to estimate the development of sales volumes of different vehicle portfolios taking into account the introduction of alternative powertrains. Long term effects like infrastructure and technology development as well as specific purchase decisions that are influencing sales volume are to be modeled simultaneously. Furthermore, diffusion processes of the new technologies as well as competition between the powertrain concepts have to be considered.
To achieve this objective, an analysis of the automotive market with regard to the introduction of alternative powertrain concepts is conducted. Based on the analysis requirements on the simulation tool are deduced and a model concept is developed. The model concept supports the selection of suitable simulation methods and modeling approaches. During the model development phase a model with a simple structure and various exogenous parameters is built. In the course of the project this model is successively expanded to disaggregate selected aspects and to endogenize the parameters. The approach is applied to a case study.
A System Dynamics model, which was developed within the project Regulatory Impact Assessment with System Dynamics, serves as a basis for the simulation environment. The model allows analyzing the impact of environmental regulations in California on the automotive industry and on purchasing behavior of customers