The Role of Learning Effect and Scale Effect in the Adoption of Energy Technologies for Alternative Fuel Vehicles

This paper analyzes the adoption of energy technologies for alternative fuel vehicles based on learning curve approach. The energy technologies are divided into three categories: conventional, evolving and emerging energy technologies. The analysis shows that conventional energy technologies exhibit low learning rates associated with increasing returns to scale effects, evolving energy technologies show high learning rate whereas emerging energy technologies present low learning rates associated with decreasing returns to scale effects. They also show that the magnitude of learning effects as well as of scale effects depend in a large extent on the technological change stage of the energy technologies.