Transportation Research Part C 13 (2005) 448–462
www.elsevier.com/locate/trc
Estimating the technology frontier
for personal electric vehicles
Karl T. Ulrich
Department of Operations and Information Management and Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics,
University of Pennsylvania, 547 Huntsman Hall, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA
Received 7 October 2003; accepted 18 January 2006
Abstract
The personal electric vehicle (PEV) emerged as a new category of transportation device in the late 1990s. PEVs transport
a single passenger over trip distances of 1–10 km and employ electricity as the motive energy source. The category is prin-
cipally comprised of electric-powered scooters and cycles. Personal electric vehicles offer several potential benefits to con-
sumers and to society including lower transportation costs, reduced trip times, and lower environmental impact. The PEV
therefore offers many intriguing possibilities for extending the human range of mobility from about 1 km (via walking) to
10 km or more. However, the full potential of the category has not been realized, to a large extent because the vehicles are
not yet light enough, do not go far enough, and cost too much. The main question addressed by this article is what are the
technological limits on personal electric vehicle design? And more specifically, How light can PEVs be? How far can they
go? How little can they cost? What are the trade-offs across these dimensions of performance at the efficient frontier? The
methodological approach of the paper is to combine a technology assessment of the major subsystems of a PEV with a
technical model of vehicle performance in order to estimate the cost and mass of a vehicle for a given set of functional
requirements.
2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Personal electric vehicles; Electric vehicles; Personal transportation; Technical model; Cost model; Electric scooter; Electric
bicycle
1. Introduction
The personal electric vehicle (PEV) emerged as a new category of transportati