  Consumer preference elicitation is critical to devise effective policies for
the diffusion of electric vehicles in India. For this purpose, we use stated
preferences of over 1000 Indian consumers and present the first estimates of
the additional purchase price that Indian consumers are willing to pay to
improve the electric vehicle attributes (e.g., driving range). We adopt a
hybrid choice modelling framework to simultaneously model the willingness to
pay and the effect of consumers' latent attitudes (e.g., hedonic and symbolic
values) on their likelihood to adopt electric vehicles. We also account for
reference dependence by considering a conventional vehicle as the reference
alternative and illustrate that the resulting willingness to pay estimates are
more realistic. Based on our results, Indian consumers are willing to pay
additional USD 10-34 in purchase price to reduce the fast charging time by 1
minute, USD 7-40 to add a kilometre to the driving range of electric vehicle at
200 kilometres, and USD 104-692 to save USD 1 per 100 kilometres in operating
cost. These estimates and the effect of attitudes on the likelihood to adopt
electric vehicles provide insights about electric vehicle design, marketing
strategies, and pro-electric-vehicle policies (e.g., specialised lanes and
reserved parking for electric vehicles) to expedite the adoption of electric
vehicles in India.
