Analysing the effect of Covid-19 and fuel price on the South African motor vehicles export

The manufacturing sector is vital in the South African economy, especially in international trade. Nonetheless, the covid-19 and fuel price fluctuations have convulsed both global and domestic production and trade. This study analsed how an increase in new cases of covid-19 and fuel price shocks affected motor vehicles export in South Africa. The assessment used monthly time series from March 2020 to March 2022. The autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) and error correction models assisted in determining both long-run and short-run relationships among variables. The results suggested an inverse relationship between new covid-19 cases, fuel prices and motor vehicle exports in both the long and short run. This study recommends introducing new vehicle models that are fuel efficiency, tax and levy reduction on fuel to reduce the effect of the high fuel price of vehicles export. Increasing awareness, precaution and encouraging vaccination could assist in lowering COVID-19 infection.

Analysing the Impact of Covid-19 on Automobile Sales in India Using ARIMA Modelling

The Covid-19 pandemic has caused severe economic depression and has disrupted the supply chains of various industries. The automobile industry which contributes significantly to the Indian economy was gravely hit due to the lockdowns, semiconductor shortage and the uncertainty associated with the pandemic. This research paper analyses the effect of Covid-19 on the automobile sales in India using the time series modelling approach. The data recorded by SIAM from 2012 to 2019 was used to develop the Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) model following the Box-Jenkins methodology. ARIMA model (2, 1, 3) was chosen as it had the lowest AIC and BIC criteria. This model was used to forecast the sales from 2020 to 2021 to give a picture of the expected automobile sales had the pandemic not occurred. The forecasted data from the model developed has then been compared with actual automobile sales data during the pandemic to gauge the level of impact Covid-19 had on the Indian automobile industry. The paper also explores the associated challenges that the automobile industry had to face due to the pandemic. © 2022 The authors and IOS Press.

The Role of Electric Vehicles in an Aggregator's Portfolio

As the world looks towards a future powered by renewable energy sources, the technical implications of phasing out fossil fuel-based energy production and the gradual electrification process that has intensified in recent years through the automatization of production are becoming more and more apparent. These changes may be seen in multiple sectors, but the attention of this article is focused on one of the biggest polluters, the transportation sector. The contribution of this article is relevant since the topic itself is highly relevant in the context of an ongoing energy crisis and recent policies which favour the increase of electric vehicle sales and the paper offers a condensed summary of the current state of electric vehicles in terms of currently available technologies, the evolution of the EV market in recent years as well as forecasts for the following decade and the contribution EVs may have to stabilize the power system, which may be used as a basis for future research.

Acceptance of ELV Management: The Role of Social Influence, Knowledge, Attitude, Institutional Trust, and Health Issues

The growth of Indonesia’s automotive sector has increased the number of end-of-life vehicles (ELVs), making ELV waste management a major issue. Most countries, such as Japan, China, and Europe, manage ELV waste well, but developing countries still do not. In developing countries, little is known about ELV social admissions. This study analyzes ELV management social acceptance in developing countries. Three hundred nine respondents from Jakarta, Bogor, Depok, Tangerang, and Bekasi (the district in Indonesia) were surveyed in a cross-sectional. A set of questions was designed to determine social acceptance (attitude, knowledge, social influence, institutional trust, health issues, and acceptance). After passing validity and reliability tests, the hypothesized research model was estimated using structural equitation. According to this study, social influence, attitude, knowledge, institutional trust, and health issues influenced public acceptance. The health issues variable was also a good moderator (Adj. R2 = 0.173, p < 0.001, average path coefficient = 0.299). The analysis of social acceptance models related to ELV management found that social influence, attitude, knowledge, and institutional trust play a role in one’s desire to accept a new rule, and health issues can strengthen a person in the admission process.

Determining Factors of Consumers’ Choice of Sport Utility Vehicles in an Isolated Energy System: How Can We Contribute to the Decarbonization of the Economy?

This paper analyses the profile of individuals who decide to purchase a Sport Utility Vehicle (SUV) in a medium-sized isolated island system such as Tenerife Island. To achieve this objective, we used a survey conducted in 2017 to identify the characteristics of the individuals most likely to choose an SUV or another type of vehicle or be undecided. Subsequently, a discrete choice model was estimated to assess the probability that an individual chooses one of the three options as a function of their socio-economic characteristics, mobility routines, vehicle attributes and psychosocial traits. The results show the need to adopt energy policy measures related to vehicle choice, as they put the fulfilment of the decarbonization objectives for the energy transition in the Canary Islands at risk. Firstly, the authorities should carry out campaigns to achieve a more environmentally conscious behaviour by highlighting the higher consumption and emission levels of this type of vehicle. Secondly, subsidies for more efficient new vehicles and taxation should promote the purchase of low-emission vehicles to compensate for the greater willingness to pay of SUV buyers. In particular, purchase taxation should be linked to emission levels rather than only considering power, engine characteristics or labelling.

Review on Integrated On-Board Charger-Traction Systems: V2G Topologies, Control Approaches, Standards and Power Density State-of-the-Art for Electric Vehicle

This article reviews the different topologies compatible with V2G feature and control approaches of integrated onboard charger (iOBC) systems for battery electric vehicles (BEVs). The integrated topologies are presented, analyzed, and compared in terms of component count, switching frequency, total harmonic distortion (THD), charging and traction efficiencies, controllability, reliability and multifunctionality. This paper also analyzes different control approaches for charging and traction modes. Moreover, the performance indices such as setting time, rise time, overshoot, etc., are summarized for charging and traction operations. Additionally, the feasibility of a Level 3 charging (AC fast charging with 400 Vac) of up to 44 kW iOBC is discussed in terms of converter efficiencies with different switching frequencies and switch technologies such as SiC and GaN. Finally, this paper explores the power density trends of different commercial integrated charging systems. The power density trend analysis could certainly help researchers and solution engineers in the automotive industry to select the suitable converter topology to achieve the projected power density.

Forecasting of Automobile Sales Based on Support Vector Regression Optimized by the Grey Wolf Optimizer Algorithm

With the development of the Internet and big data, more and more consumer behavior data are used in different forecasting problems, which greatly improve the performance of prediction. As the main travel tool, the sales of automobiles will change with the variations of the market and the external environment. Accurate prediction of automobile sales can not only help the dealers adjust their marketing plans dynamically but can also help the economy and the transportation sector make policy decisions. The automobile is a product with high value and high involvement, and its purchase decision can be affected by its own attributes, economy, policy and other factors. Furthermore, the sample data have the characteristics of various sources, great complexity and large volatility. Therefore, this paper uses the Support Vector Regression (SVR) model, which has global optimization, a simple structure, and strong generalization abilities and is suitable for multi-dimensional, small sample data to predict the monthly sales of automobiles. In addition, the parameters are optimized by the Grey Wolf Optimizer (GWO) algorithm to improve the prediction accuracy. First, the grey correlation analysis method is used to analyze and determine the factors that affect automobile sales. Second, it is used to build the GWO-SVR automobile sales prediction model. Third, the experimental analysis is carried out by using the data from Suteng and Kaluola in the Chinese car segment, and the proposed model is compared with the other four commonly used methods. The results show that the GWO-SVR model has the best performance of mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) and root mean square error (RMSE). Finally, some management implications are put forward for reference.

New Energy Vehicle Consumer Demand Mining Research Based on Fusion Topic Model: A Case in China

This study extracted the demand preference topic words of new energy vehicle consumers with the help of the topic model, calculated the similarity between the word vectors and the topic keywords and expanded the topic keywords, analyzed and compared the demand topics and feature expansion words of different car models, and summarized the demand differences of other consumer groups. The analysis results show that consumers’ demands of different groups have the exact demand dimensions such as new energy features and brand features, and different demand dimensions such as application, services, and professional performance. The research findings help consumers filter valuable information from online review data and help car companies objectively and accurately obtain consumer demands, develop more reasonable marketing strategies, and achieve healthy and sustainable corporate development.

Chip demand pushes automotive and lubricant industry changes

If there were an award for strongest trending topics in 2021, semiconductors would be among the top contenders. Rightly so, considering their use in so many applications, such as automobiles, wireless communications, personal computers, servers and electromedical and various other digital technologies. As the "smartness" quotient in end-use applications continues to climb, chip demand similarly continues to experience robust growth. The COVID-19 pandemic served to further bolster this momentum, as remote operations of manufacturing and service sectors placed even greater demands on connectivity and digital hardware--to the point where manufacturers began stockpiling chips for the integrated circuits. In contrast, the just-in-time modeled supply chains of the automotive sector froze the procurement of chips during the initial lockdown phases of the pandemic. Over the last two decades, original equipment manufacturers have been working relentlessly toward transforming their automobiles from primarily mechanical machines to electronic devices.

Electric Vehicles: Bibliometric Analysis of the Current State of the Art and Perspectives

In order to gain a comprehensive view of electric vehicles (EVs) technologies and understand the emphasis of current research, this study evaluated the most relevant themes related to EVs through a bibliometric analysis using the keyword “electric vehicle” as the input. The Web of ScienceTM (WoS) database was used because it is considered ideal for bibliometric analysis. The VOSviewer software was adopted as a bibliometric analysis tool to visualize the networks of authors, countries, journals and keywords. The analysis carried out on 9 November 2021 retrieved a total of 29,304 documents in the period 2000 to 2021. The results show that in the last nine years the number of publications about EVs has grown significantly. The China is the leading nation in the field of EV research, contributing the largest number of publications in the world, with the main authors and research institutions involved. The journal Energies stands out as the main publishing periodical. Keyword analysis showed that studies on EVs in the last two decades have focused on themes related to energy management and storage, infrastructure and charging systems and environmental issues. The bibliometric analysis presented provides relevant information on the main themes studied about EVs and technological advances in development.