Calculating the price trajectory of adoption of fuel cell vehicles

How do you model consumer behaviour for disruptive technologies? Technologies that potentially have no antecedents and that, by their very definition, change consumer behaviour patterns? This paper outlines a methodology and results employed during a study to model the consumer willingness to pay for fuel cell vehicles, a potential disruptive innovation (DI). The first part of the study provides a short overview on DI highlighting why the fuel cell family of technologies may represent an upcoming DI. From the post ante study of successful historical disruptive innovations a number of initial 'rules of adoption' can be sketched. Further narrowing of the focus on economic reasons for adoption provides a framework for which the willingness to pay for the new disruptive technology, such as, here, fuel cell vehicles, can be analysed during different phases of the market. This economic framework is then applied to the potential future market of fuel cell vehicles using information from a model that was built from vehicles during the build years 1994-2002 in the subcompact, compact and luxury class. The results presented in this paper concentrate on the subcompact and compact class of vehicle and supersede the initial results previously published. Finally, there is a short discussion on different pathways that this can be taken forward and used to help in policy decisions. (C) 2004 International Association for Hydrogen Energy. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.