Understanding the Diffusion of Alternative Fuels Technologies for Transport

• Autor(a) principal: Thiago Luis Felipe Brito
• Data de Publicação: 2019
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Biblioteca Digital de Teses e Dissertações da USP
• Texto Completo: https://doi.org/10.11606/T.106.2019.tde-02062020-112445

This thesis brings together three individual studies that were produced by the author throughout his doctoral period. Each one provides quantitative parameters that seek to understand how the diffusion of technologies that use alternative fuels for vehicles occurs. In the first two, we studied a well-documented and widely discussed case in the literature: the National Alcohol Program, which started in Brazil in the 1970s. The first article uses an innovative variation of the Bass model to identify how financial incentives for the acquisition of ethanol and flex vehicles impacted on the diffusion of these technologies. The results allowed us to observe for the first time how the loss of consumer confidence contributed to the failure of ethanol technology in the early 1990s. At the same time, our results reinforced the importance of government incentives and self-sufficiency in the medium or long term. In the second article, we seek to understand how much the market share of vehicles is sensitive (elastic) to fuel price variations. The results point to cross-influence, mainly when gasoline and ethanol compete against each other. When flex-fuel cars enter the market, both its versatility and increased engine efficiency make it the dominant technology in a remarkably short period. These results provide relevant reflections for the suggestion of public and market policies for the diffusion of new technologies such as electric, hybrids and natural gas. The latter is the subject of study of the third article. We adopt the concept of the Blue Corridors - routes that enable the use of trucks with liquefied natural gas (LNG) through the installation of the necessary supply infrastructure. In the article, we elaborated different LNG distribution scenarios for the state of São Paulo and calculated the costs and the potential to reduce emissions. The results point to the centralised liquefaction model in the early stages of the project, which could eventually evolve to hybrid or local, as the technology diffuses. Our general conclusions demonstrate that our studies provided complementary and relevant interpretations of the adoption of alternative vehicle technologies.