Tim Karcher

Tim Karcher is a master student in Management and Technology at Technical University of Munich. Beforehand, he studied at Ludwig-Maximilians-University München and Copenhagen Business School. In the course of the past years, Tim has gained vast practical experience in different mobility-related companies. After working for an e-mobility start-up, he writes his master thesis about public charging of electric vehicles now.

In the research project, Tim will shed light on two aspects of public charging by performing a choice-based conjoint analysis. For the first part, Tim will examine consumer preferences towards public charging sessions. In this context, he will take a closer look at prices of charging sessions, location of charging stations, charging speed levels, and charging-related services, such as a reservation feature. For the second part, he will investigate consumer preferences towards service contracts for public charging which are required to use most of public charging stations.

Over the past years, public charging infrastructure has developed greatly throughout Europe and beyond. However, at this point in time, e-mobility service providers still lack customer knowledge. In particular, little is known about their actual preferences concerning public charging sessions and service contracts. Hence, this research project aims to decrease this gap and, thereby, to provide valuable insights for the pricing strategy of e-mobility service providers.

Target audience of the research project

The research results has four potential interest groups. Firstly, it will directly serve e-mobility service providers who seek to optimize their pricing strategies. Secondly, it will provide insights to charge point operators who build new charging stations at different locations with different charging speed levels. Thirdly, it will help OEMs to better understand their relatively new customer group of EV drivers. Lastly, the research results may also be interesting to EV drivers who demand a more customer-friendly infrastructure for charging their vehicles in public.