ABSTRACT
Introduction
increasing concern about the environmental impact of current road transport systems as well as the analyses of risks associated with peak oil (Hirsch et al., 2005) have led to greater interest in sustainable transportation. Mobility systems based on electric vehicles (EVs) are considered promising for coping with these challenges. Many countries have set up action plans to increase the proportion of EVs within the road transport sector (Die Bundesregierung, 2009). However, the positive effects of EVs on the sustainability of the transport sector are still debated (Horst et al., 2009; Huo et al., 2010). It has been shown that these effects are largely dependent on how an electric mobility system (EMS) is set up as well as how it is used (Eggers and Eggers, 2011). Hence the user is a critical parameter in the equation of the net environmental benefit of EMSs. Adopting the perspective of human-centred systems engineering (Nemeth, 2003) three essential components should to be taken into account when optimizing user-system interaction: technical system, user and task. The task of EMss is to increase sustainability. Much is known about the theoretical sustainable potential of certain technical system variants for sustainability, but little is known about user factors in this equation.
