Acceptance of battery electric sports cars among car enthusiasts: A survey

The automotive industry is currently facing the important and complex challenge of electrification, a concern that involves not only the largest automotive OEMs but also more niche supercars and sports cars manufacturers. This study aims to investigate the acceptance of battery electric vehicles (BEVs), and more specifically electric sports cars, within a sample of 243 Italian sports car owners and enthusiasts, using the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) as theoretical framework model. We developed hypotheses and conducted an online survey to investigate participants' attitudes and behavioral intentions toward this new vehicle technology. Data were analysed using four multiple regression models: the first two to examine participants' attitudes and behavioral intentions toward general BEVs, and the last two to examine participants' attitudes and behavioral intentions toward electric sports cars. The evidence found confirms the underlying assumptions of the original Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) for both participants' attitude towards BEVs and towards electric sports car. Those attitudes, along with perceived enjoyment, were later analysed using extensions of the TAM model (Augmented TAM and TAM++), showing they significantly influenced participants' behavioral intentions toward BEVs and toward electric sports cars. Two subjective norms were also tested, but only the norm related to participants' inner circle of local car enthusiast was significant. The results show that car enthusiasts generally have a negative attitude and unfavourable intention towards BEVs and electric sports cars, particularly being sceptical about their ability to offer superior driving dynamics and greater engagement. Nevertheless, almost half of the respondents believe that developing electric sports cars with a better power-to-weight ratio could be a more acceptable and effective strategy for electrification by manufacturers. Finally, factors such as purchase cost, driving range and charging time, identified as main barriers to EVs acceptance and adoption in previous literature, have been confirmed as limiting factors also among our sample of sports car owners and enthusiasts. The findings of this study may provide relevant recommendations for automotive manufacturers in developing the next generations of sports cars and in implementing the related marketing and sales strategies.