A pilot study to address the travel behaviour and the usability of electric vehicles in two Italian provinces

• We perform the analysis of two GPS driving patterns databases.
• We derive the urban travel behaviour in two Italian provinces.
• We estimate the BEVs usability and modal shift by assuming overnight recharge.
• One-fourth of the urban fleet could be replaced by BEVs without range limitations.
• The BEVs electric energy demand is about 17% of the domestic demand of the province.

This paper presents the results of a pilot study based on the analysis of driving data of a large sample of vehicles to address the urban travel behaviour and the usability of electric vehicles in real world conditions. The work relies on two databases, containing the anonymous driving patterns of approximately 28,000 conventional fuel vehicles in the Italian provinces of Modena and Firenze during one month (May 2011). From the statistical processing of the data it is possible to depict the urban mobility behaviour in these geographical areas, characterising trips length, average speed and parking duration distributions. Then these results have been used to quantify the urban fleet share suitable to be converted to battery electric vehicles, the modal shift required to meet the e-mobility target of the EU White Paper 2011 and the electric energy demand from the EVs fleet, by assuming overnight recharge.