To achieve this total, Juniper believes that stakeholders primarily need to establish the viability and desirability of electric vehicles with consumers, and adopt an aggressive ‘go to market’ strategy that includes the rolling out of a wide-scale public charging infrastructure, working to improve vehicle battery life and range per charge, and incentivising change.

The new research, ‘Hybrid and Electric Vehicles: Consumer and Commercial Markets’, also found that electric car manufacturers are prioritising range as the key issue. Tesla and Chevrolet have focused their efforts towards ensuring that their models’ mileage range can exceed 200 miles on a fully charged vehicle.

Juniper Research ranked the top five electric vehicle manufacturers, scoring them on five key factors: Vehicle range (EPA rated mileage (Environmental Protection Agency)); Vehicle sales; Infrastructure implementation; Time spent in development and deployment; Future plans and innovation.

The top ranked manufacturers were:

1) Tesla
2) BMW
3) Nissan
4) Chevrolet
5) Ford

Tesla scored highly with strong sales, superior mileage range and firm commitment to their Tesla Supercharge scheme.

Additionally, Juniper recommended that OEMs take an active role in this education process, investing in campaigns to communicate the capabilities and benefits of electric vehicles in order for them to be viewed as a real alternative to combustion engines.

The whitepaper, ‘Electric Vehicles Going the Extra Mile’, is now available to download from the Juniper website together with further details of the full research.