Gerardo Zarazua de Rubens

Aarhus University | AU · AU Herning

While vehicle-to-grid technology could provide substantial benefits to consumers and society, its adoption has been confined to a niche and relatively stagnant. In this article, we study the role of user-based innovations in increasing the acceptance and adoption of niche technologies such as vehicle-to-grid. To do so, we connect three interrelated...

Over the last decade or more, the automobility literature has sought to observe and affect the dynamic tenacity of passenger vehicles. This paper takes up a recent call to actually study how private electric vehicles (EVs) are changing automobility. For this, it identifies four qualitative categories of automobility: general vehicle use, the car in...

This study is motivated by the prospect of needing to harness significant flows of investment and finance, along with private sector commitment, towards decarbonizing passenger transport in Europe. It asks: what types of actors and stakeholder groups, business models, and resulting innovation activity systems might vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology...

This study explores energy use patterns, climate change issues, and the relationship between social-psychological factors, and residents’ acceptance of and willingness to pay (WTP) for home energy management systems (HEMS) during COVID-19 pandemic in New York. The results of our survey suggest that there were no longer morning or evening usage peak...

Conceptualizations and articulations of ‘the future’ play a persistent and important role in discussions about technology adoption and the broader domain of sustainability transitions. The Sociology of Expectations, part of the transitions and science and technology studies literature, specifically focusses on the performative role that desirable e...

Social media have been widely recognized as critical communication channel in disaster situations. However, there is limited empirical investigation on how the intersecting issues of social order, environmental impacts, and crisis communication unfold from the perspective of a social media user. This study examines 60,449 tweets to and from the new...

Electric vehicle Vehicle-grid integration Vehicle-to-grid Diffusion of innovations Low-carbon mobility Electrification of transport A B S T R A C T This study investigates the interconnected influence of socio-demographic, behavioral, economic, and technical factors associated with electric vehicle (EV) adoption interest and the influence of vehicl...

Electric vehicles are perceived as a key alternate to internal combustion engine vehicles for a transition to a decarbonized society. However, this transition towards the electrification of transport has not made equal progress globally, and faced several impediments to consumer adoption of EVs across the Nordic region and beyond. While there has b...

With a global transition to electric vehicles (EVs) slowly gaining traction, it is expedient to move the debate to issues connected to geography, space, and place. One of these emerging issues is the uptake of EVs in rural areas. This paper provides a spatial state of affairs in the Nordic region and it explores how EVs are perceived and argued to...

This study investigates human-building interaction in office spaces across multiple countries including Brazil, Italy, Poland, Switzerland, the United States, and Taiwan. We analyze social-psychological, contextual, and demographic factors to explain crosscountry differences in adaptive thermal actions (i.e. cooling and heating behaviors) and confo...

Several studies have investigated large scale renewables, electricity networks and the potential for a supergrid, both in the US and the Europe. However, much of this work is focused on technical and economic barriers and under-recognises social, political and other non-technical aspects. This paper builds a conceptual framework to analyse the non-...

Electric vehicles (EVs) are becoming the next automotive technology to be widely diffused in society. However, many structural challenges remain to be addressed around the EV socio-technical system as the technology progresses from a niche to early and late mass markets. This study investigates the challenges for electric vehicles focusing on their...

Public awareness and acceptance of electric vehicles (EVs) are essential components to catalyse a faster uptake of more sustainable passenger transport as well as vehicle-to-grid (V2G) mobility. As such, public perceptions are central to decarbonize transportation and help capture the co-benefits of reduced local pollution, noise emissions, and oil...

In this paper, we provide a comparative and mixed methods assessment of the gendered dimensions of electric mobility and stated preferences for electric vehicles in the Nordic region. This includes the potential for such vehicles to be configured in a vehicle-to-grid (V2G) manner, where they can store energy and offer services to the grid, generati...

Despite a potentially revolutionary shift towards electric mobility in the passenger vehicle market, the academic and policymaking communities remain wedded to a techno-economic paradigm that may not fully appreciate deeper social and geographic elements of a transition to electric vehicles. In this paper, based primarily on bivariate statistical a...

Electric vehicles (EVs) continue to penetrate passenger vehicle markets worldwide. Most current EV markets remain in nascent stages, with buyers being categorised as early adopters or pioneers. However, if electric vehicles are to successfully contribute to the decarbonisation of transportation, they must reach mainstream consumer segments. To inve...

Much research on electric mobility transitions has been descriptive or positive, rather than normative or critical, assessing the deeper ethical, justice, or moral issues that arise. To address this gap, this study qualitatively examines the ongoing transition to Nordic electric vehicles (EVs) and vehicle-to-grid (V2G) systems. It does so through t...

“Range anxiety,” defined as the psychological anxiety a consumer experiences in response to the limited range of an electric vehicle, continues to be labelled and presented as one of the most pressing barriers to their mainstream diffusion. As a result, academia, policymakers and even industry have focused on addressing the range anxiety barrier in...

Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) refers to a technology that could help make the electricity grid more effective, reduce the cost of ownership of electric vehicles (EVs), and help integrate intermittent renewable energy sources. However, despite these advantages, implementation and even knowledge of the technology is not widespread. In order to explore why, w...

In order for vehicle-to-grid to viably provide services to the electricity grid and gain new revenue streams, a proper regulatory framework needs to be in place. From this perspective, there are several obstacles to the implementation of vehicle-to-grid. The regulatory framework of the electricity grid needs to acknowledge and properly regulate ene...

Starting with the basics, this chapter defines the conceptualization of vehicle-to-grid and reviews the three elements necessary to a vehicle-to-grid system, including a power connection, communication capability and aggregation, and the means to audit services rendered to the grid. Next, the focus turns to the services that vehicle-to-grid can and...

The sociotechnical frame of vehicle-to-grid supposes that these barriers are not as disconnected as the previous chapters treat them. Instead, they form a “seamless web” that weaves together the technical, economic, political, and sociocultural elements of the system. To elaborate, this chapter synthesizes the described barriers across the various...

Vehicle-to-grid has a myriad of potential benefits, though they can roughly be characterized into three central themes that align with different elements of sociotechnical systems. These themes include technical, economic, and environmental elements, and each impacts different actors and has different scopes, ranging from the individual to society....

Building on the idea that the technical barriers of vehicle-to-grid form the basis of the other sociotechnical barriers, this chapter discusses how the technical elements of vehicle-to-grid impact its economic effectiveness. To do so, the chapter employs a cost-benefit perspective, building upon a comparison between an electric vehicle and a tradit...

The current understanding of vehicle-to-grid from a consumer perspective is quite limited, perhaps unsurprising considering the novelty of the technology. This chapter first describes the ambivalence and overall limited awareness that consumers have towards vehicle-to-grid, and then employs three sociotechnical theories to gain a prospective unders...

This book defines and charts the barriers and future of vehicle-to-grid technology: a technology that could dramatically reduce emissions, create revenue, and accelerate the adoption of battery electric cars. This technology connects the electric power grid and the transportation system in ways that will enable electric vehicles to store renewable...

This chapter reviews the various technical challenges that vehicle-to-grid currently faces, with a richer focus on the three primary barriers: battery degradation, charger efficiency, and aggregation and communication. While none of these three barriers prevent a vehicle-to-grid system from being put into place, they are the basis for many of the o...

In this concluding chapter, we first review the three central research questions of vehicle-to-grid, namely its benefits, its barriers, and the policies required to ensure its diffusion. These themes are then compared and contrasted with current expert perspectives. Next, the chapter problematizes a vehicle-to-grid future, focusing on five elements...

Based on original data derived from 257 expert respondents across Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden, we investigate the different expectations and visions associated with one form of low carbon transport, electric mobility, inclusive of vehicle-to-grid and vehicle-grid-integration configurations. Utilizing concepts from the sociology of...

We present the results from a choice experiment conducted across Denmark Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden focusing on electric vehicles and vehicle-to-grid technology. The survey involved the entire Nordic region and had >4000 respondents choosing between two versions of electric vehicles (some including vehicle-to-grid capability) as well as th...

This paper explores how conceptions of luxury and status affect the manner in which a relatively novel technology—an electric vehicle— diffuses across societies. To do so, it combines Veblen's notion of conspicuous consumption and Roger's diffusion of innovation by proposing a new theoretical variation, which we term “conspicuous diffusion.” The pa...

Electric vehicles are an important instrument to decarbonize transportation, offering a range of co-benefits such as reductions in local pollution, noise emissions, and oil dependency. Unfortunately, price, range, infrastructure and technological uncertainty are only some of the barriers to a faster adoption of these vehicles. To overcome these bar...

In this article we explore how a single standard dealing with vehicle-to-grid (V2G) mobility, ISO 15118, is coproduced in divergent ways across Asia, Europe, and North America. Specifically, ISO 15118 enables V2G as it oversees the communication between electric vehicles (EVs) and electric vehicle service equipment. It allows for bidirectional elec...

Many researchers, policymakers and other stakeholders have explored and supported efforts to transition towards more sustainable forms of low-carbon mobility. Often, discussion will flow from a narrow view of consumer perceptions surrounding passenger vehicles—presuming that users act in rationalist, instrumental, and predictable patterns. In this...

Electric vehicles and vehicle-to-grid are one option to achieve the transition to decarbonizing society. Despite perceived advantages of cost-savings and carbon reductions, such technologies have faced various barriers that has prevented wide-scale adoption. While much literature has carefully investigated the techno-economics dimensions to electri...

The five Nordic countries of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden have aggressive climate and energy policies in place and are largely on track in their decarbonisation of electricity, heat, and buildings. Transportation and mobility, however, remains a pressing challenge. This study asks: what are the greatest national and regional transpo...

As most consumers do not have pre-existing knowledge of electric vehicles (EVs), and current market conditions favour petrol and diesel vehicles, car dealership experiences may strongly influence EV purchasing decisions. Here, we show that car dealerships pose a significant barrier at the point of sale due to a perceived lack of business case viabi...

Vehicle to Grid (V2G) holds the promise of cheap, flexible, and fast-responding storage through the use of electric vehicle batteries. Unfortunately, infrastruc.ture, battery degradation and consumer awareness are only some of the challenges to a faster development of this technology. This paper offers a qualitative comparative analysis that draws...

This paper examines the social costs and benefits of potential configurations of electric vehicle deployment, including and excluding vehicle-to-grid. To fully explore the benefits and costs of different electric vehicle pathways, four different scenarios are devised with both today's and 2030 electricity grid in Denmark. These scenarios combine di...