Researchers have used established scientific methods to identify evidence of a ‘tipping point’ in the UK’s second-hand electric car market.
A tipping point is considered to be the point at which a series of small changes become significant enough to cause a larger, more important change.
There are different mechanisms that can drive tipping points, for example there is the ‘learning process’ whereby early adopters sharing knowledge encourages others to adopt. Another is ‘increasing returns’ in which something becomes a more attractive a proposition, the more people adopt it.
The concept has been widely researched in fields such as ecology and climate dynamics and now a team from University of Exeter have looked at data from Auto Trader’s car sales website and applied it to second-hand EV adoption. Specifically, they looked at the daily views of adverts for EVs versus those for ICE vehicles.
Dr Chris Boulton, from Exeter’s Global Systems Institute said: ‘To identify a possible tipping point, we look for evidence that the status quo may be losing resilience – becoming unstable.
‘For example, in the Amazon rainforest we examined daily vegetation changes and found the forest is recovering more slowly from disturbances like droughts – making it vulnerable to a tipping point.
‘In the case of second-hand EVs, we analysed data from 2018-23.
‘Early in that period, spikes in EV interest subsided quickly, in just a few days. Later spikes lasted longer, up to several weeks.
‘And over time, EVs made up a larger and larger proportion of the ‘baseline’ state.
‘This is a strong signal that UK drivers are becoming more receptive to second-hand EVs – and this will probably increase further as technology continues to improve, prices continue to fall and more EVs reach the second-hand market.”
The team noticed that in 2022, only 3.5% of vehicles that visitors to the website viewed were EVs. A year later this had doubled to 7%.
What would normally be referred to as ‘Early warning signals’ were renamed by the Exeter team ‘early opportunity signals’ because in this instance, a tipping point is the desirable outcome.
Researchers look for such signals in the manner in which the existing state-of-affairs (in this case an ICE-dominated marketplace) becomes less resilient, ‘responding more sluggishly to perturbations and taking longer to return to equilibrium.’
The team felt that if such early opportunity signals exist, they could be used to steer further interventions to force the tipping point.
Their findings suggest that UK public interest in second-hand EVs is nearing that tipping point (and may have already crossed it for certain price ranges) and they reflect that this shift in interest could soon be reflected in sales. They point out that the supply of EVs in the secondary market began to rise in March 2023, driven by the resale of cars coming off 3-year leases — a consequence of the sharp increase in new EV sales seen in 2020.
Professor Tim Lenton, also from the University of Exeter, said: ‘Our findings provide a clear signal that the status quo – dominance of petrol and diesel cars – is becoming less stable.
‘This is an early opportunity signal to the government and to investors to drive change, knowing that they will get a disproportionate return on their efforts.
‘Now we know this tipping point may be happening, actions can be taken to accelerate it – helping to cut the 13% of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions that come from cars.’
The full research can be read here.