Estimating the technology frontier for personal electric vehicles

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 principally comprised of electric-powered scooters and cycles. Personal electric vehicles offer several potential benefits to consumers 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.