[Thecoogee]

Hi there,
I’m a student at university and i’ve just started a project on long distance EV travel.
For my project I need some user based research, but unfortunately I don‘t know anyone who uses an EV, so was hoping i could find some people to fill out my questionnaire on here!
my question is, does this forum allow surveys for university projects? and are there any guidelines I need to follow before posting a survey?

 

[DrEskimo]

Most students just post a link with no information, so you are already getting off to a good start by being courteous enough to ask!

I personally like to see details on what the project is for and how my data will be used. In particular, whether it has been approved by university ethics and adheres to GDPR guidelines.

As a bit of advice, I would strongly recommend asking users on here for feedback on the development of the questionnaire. Often referred to as Public Involvement, it can help tailor your questionnaire to get the most relevant details you need and ensure the questions are sensible.

 

[BornAgainEcoWarrior]

Guidelines...as we get loads of survey requests there probably should be.
How about this.
Tell us who you are, what you’re researching.
Be polite and clear what you’re asking, why and what you’lol do with the answers.
Be prepared for some members of the community to pick apart any questions that aren’t well worded or are in any way leading.

 

[Thecoogee]

Okay so to answer both of those replies, I’m a masters student and the project is for my Product Design Engineering major project. The brief is to design equipment which can increase the range of EVs.

I’ve had the survey approved by university ethics, all data is anonymous and the information gained from the survey will influence how i design my solution to the brief. It will also be used in a report to justify the design approach I take.

All data will be stored in password protected cloud storage, will only be accessible by myself and my supervisor, and will be deleted after the project has closed.

Before the survey there is a declaration which outlines everything like this, and a box to tick which says that you agree to everything. The survey does not proceed until consent is given.

I would be very happy to listen to feedback on the questionnaire, as anything that can improve that can improve my project too!

Should I link the survey in this thread, or begin a new one to increase the amount of people who see it?

Thanks for your help.

 

[DrEskimo]

Maybe post the questionnaire on here with the aim of getting feedback from a few members first, then post the final version in a new thread to collect your data.

Just an idea, you do whatever you feel is best

 

[Thecoogee]

That’s a good idea, i’ll do that. Here’s a link to the questionnaire:

How do you use your Electric Vehicle when travelling long distance?

***PLEASE READ THE FOLLOWING BEFORE PROCEEDING WITH THE QUESTIONNAIRE*** This is a research questionnaire for a University project. It aims to discover how owners of electric vehicles travel using their car. There will be questions regarding long distance travel, general use, and about the...

forms.gle

Let me know what you think!

Edit: I forgot to mention that it should take around 10 mins to complete.

 

[BornAgainEcoWarrior]

Ok what’s a level 1 or 2 charger?

How often do you use public charging... the answers are subjective often / rarely etc need a definition. Try instead... Never, up to 5 times a year 6-10 times a year, 11-20 times a year etc.

If you use them, how much time do you usually allow the car to charge up for at public charge points (regardless of how much it charges up by)?
Answer will likely be it depends whether I need a full charge for most users. You could ask how long do you Usually charge and give a range in minutes. Answer would also depend on the charger. I might leave my car a few hours on a 7 kw charger or only 25 minutes on a rapid charger.

 

[mikegs]

OK, I've been through it (but not submitted it). Most of it is pretty clear (to me anyway) but there are some questions I think need tweaking.

In addition to asking how many EVs we have you should probably ask: How many other vehicles are used by your household? You might not think you need that, but you'll probably regret not having it since many people will use their ICE for longer journeys and that will play in to whether/when they use the EV for a longer trip.

If you use them, how much time do you usually allow the car to charge up for at public charge points might be easier for your analysis if you used multiple choices like <15 min, 30m, 45m, 60m, 2h, 3h, 4h, 6h, >6h.

Is charging your electric vehicle more or less convenient than filling up an internal combustion engine (petrol, diesel) vehicle?
As a rule: For public charging it's generally less convenient. For home charging it's more convenient. You may want to rethink that question and perhaps split it.

How often does your car have 100% or close to 100% charge when starting a journey (regardless of the length of the journey)?
That should probably be split between longer journeys and local because the answers will often be very different.

How often do you to travel long distance 100 miles or more)?
Again a multiple choice selection might be better. And I've just noticed a missing ( and some cronk wording

Does your electric vehicle offer enough range to satisfy the length of the journeys you do/would like to do?
Why not a yes/no choice?

Do you always charge your car to 100% before a long journey?
This is an overlap with the "How often does your car have 100%" one above.

 

[BornAgainEcoWarrior]

How often do you run with less than 25 miles of range remaining? ...again rarely is a subjective answer. My regular commute means this happens often from my perspective maybe a few times a month, but it is dependent on what I think often and rarely mean.

How often do you to travel long distance 100 miles or more)? Err when I need to? What’s the data you are after? Are you looking for a number of journeys that would be potentially a market opportunity for a range extender?

Question about detour to charge point. And planning around charging locations.
That’s not always the issue. There are charging points on normal routes in most cases. Sometimes I would have to stop earlier on my route than I want to as there isn’t a better placed charger later on route. Not a big issue.

 

[DrEskimo]

From a logistical point of view, you want to avoid free text as much as possible. When you come to analyse the data you will get a range of answers that will need to be consolidated due to capitalisation or different synonyms (e.g. UK, United Kingdom, Britain, britain, England, etc).

Offer multiple choice for most questions, like country, EV and time, whilst offering 'Other' if needed.

Does your electric vehicle offer a service which finds public charge points?
it does, but I don't use it. Might be worth clarifying this to ask what service users use. Things like Zap Map, Plug Share (perhaps Apps would suffice) or the car Sat Nav.

How often do you to travel long distance 100 miles or more)?
Provide multiple choice and allow skip logic so the next question doesn't show up if they answer 'Never'.

This is the same for quite a few questions.

Good luck with your project.

 

[Thecoogee]

Thanks for the feedback all!
I’m not a regular at creating survey questions, nor am I completely familiar with EV use, so this feedback helps a lot. I’ll work on amending the survey appropriately based on your recommendations/points, and hopefully it will make more sense to new participants once I get it out there properly.
Once again, thanks for your help.

 

[mikegs]

I’m not a regular at creating survey questions

The likes of Survey Monkey encourage anyone to have a go, but as you've probably noticed the results are often atrocious. Writing clear questions that will deliver answers containing useful and usable information is a lot harder than it looks.
Also don't assume that all EV users are 'familiar' with their use, any more than general car drivers know what the heck they are doing. If a question can be misunderstood it will be, and that bit of data will be either missing or, possibly worse, plain wrong.

 

[Zoefan]

Hi
I had a go and did submit it so you can see the problems with free text. It took me a few tries to realise what you were getting at when asking about extending range. You might want to explain the context of those questions. Like the others have said your data analysis will be easier if you offer multiple choice rather than free text answers. If you do want to capture opinions you can offer an opinion box that you don’t analyse but can gather opinions with.
You might also need some basic demographics like gender, age in broad ranges and also what vehicles are available to the respondent. Also how long they have driven an ev as I would guess experience affects attitude to managing longer trips.
Good luck

 

[Hitstirrer]

The preliminary questions could only have been written by a non EV driver. That isn't a criticism - just an observation.

Probing about % start charge per journey and time at charge stops are totally meaningless. Try asking the same questions about a petrol car and its tank contents and the fill times on a journey. It could be any volume and any top-up size - just as any EV would report. Even worse, as most petrol cars have similar fuel tank sizes but EV's 'tanks' can vary from 24 kWh's to 100 kWh's.

The only cars that could possibly perceive a need for some form of auxiliary range extender these days are rapidly becoming obsolete anyway. New models these days have a minimum of 200 miles and up to 400 miles. Also, cars are heading towards 800v and 900v battery voltages that charge at twice the speed and roadside chargers are now capable of 350 amps to enable charge speeds at 1000 miles per hour plugged in.

The issue nowadays isn't a need for some form of mobile range extender for low range cars, but a need for more Rapid Charge units on more main routes to provide a more comprehensive infrastructure cover. That is already in hand and would make a portable extender redundant before it could be developed and marketed. Especially at the price that would be required to cover R&D and start-up costs. And as to the suggestion of a fuel cell range extender, I can only think that just 5 minutes thought has been spent on that concept. And not by anyone with even a basic understanding of the complex issues involved.

By all means conduct your research, but if the aim is to justify the development of a rooftop/trailer battery box, offering a substantial extra range, then I suspect that you would eventually be forced to recommend that the proposer should forget it. And a much smaller 'get-out-of-jail' range boost box would, on the face of it, appear to be attractive. But such situations are increasingly rare and already covered by a small cost recovery service by flatbed.

If you proceed with this project in its present form I wish you well and would be interested to see the final report.

 

[Spiny]

Do you own/drive an electric vehicle?

Be careful where you post this survey as many Hybrid and MHEV owners consider their cars electric (well they claim to be self charging!)
You might want to filter assorted PHEV's, REX and EREV from the BEV answers as well.
I have an Ampera and frequently hit my drive as the range hits 0 miles left. No range worries here
Its sitting on the drive waiting for a timed charge now and will be full again come the morning.

Its probably worth questioning one of the long term ev owners on this site to get an idea of what owning an EV is like in the long run. There is probably someone in your area as we seem to have folks from all over the UK.

 

[Thecoogee]

Be careful where you post this survey as many Hybrid and MHEV owners consider their cars electric (well they claim to be self charging!)

Thanks for pointing that out. The survey is aimed at participants who own BEVs, but I haven‘t made that too clear. I’ll make sure it’s more obvious that i’m looking for BEV owners only.

 

[BornAgainEcoWarrior]

Be careful where you post this survey as many Hybrid and MHEV owners consider their cars electric (well they claim to be self charging!)
You might want to filter assorted PHEV's, REX and EREV from the BEV answers as well.
I have an Ampera and frequently hit my drive as the range hits 0 miles left. No range worries here
Its sitting on the drive waiting for a timed charge now and will be full again come the morning.

Its probably worth questioning one of the long term ev owners on this site to get an idea of what owning an EV is like in the long run. There is probably someone in your area as we seem to have folks from all over the UK.

If I had a PHEV with a small battery and small EV range... if I could easily buy and fit an additional 5-10KW of battery I might well do so?

 

[HandyAndy]

Thanks for pointing that out. The survey is aimed at participants who own BEVs, but I haven‘t made that too clear. I’ll make sure it’s more obvious that i’m looking for BEV owners only.

Bev only? Your original append suggested you were interested in range-extenders! These are true Evs, just thay have a "get-you-out-of-jail" near-infinite-range feature, and other benefits as well - zero range anxiety so less mental stress, no need to spend time devising plan A/B/C charger/backup-charger options, faster journey times on those very-long trips, better handling and lighter vehicle (I'm hoping Mazda Mx-30 Rex will be nimbler & lighter than say a 64 kWh Niro).

Back to the survey - I'm doing ti as I type here, so will probably be some overlap with otehr appends previously. Dunno if the survey has been updated since those, or not

Qn "Do you use a normal household outlet or A 7kW (level 2) fast charger for your electric vehicle at home? "
I cannot seelct both options! I use both, for different purposes.
My 7kW charger gets used when I'm in a hurry to charge, or my solar panels are exporting more electricity than the car can take (3 kW), so it makes sense to maximise my use of this free power. My 13A mains charger gets used, often at 6A (1.4 kW), when I want the car charged, but there's no rush, and maybe it's a cloudy-ish day and my panels might only be exporting 1 kW, so the slower I can charge the car, the more of the electricity going into is is free solar power. I'm retired, so can often charge my Evs 45 mile range over a couple of days or so.

Otherwise, looks good!

 

[Hitstirrer]

If an EV driver is venturing where there are few Rapids this would be one way to avoid being stranded. A simple home generator in the boot.

 

[Thecoogee]

Bev only? Your original append suggested you were interested in range-extenders! These are true Evs, just thay have a "get-you-out-of-jail" near-infinite-range feature, and other benefits as well - zero range anxiety so less mental stress, no need to spend time devising plan A/B/C charger/backup-charger options, faster journey times on those very-long trips, better handling and lighter vehicle (I'm hoping Mazda Mx-30 Rex will be nimbler & lighter than say a 64 kWh Niro).

Back to the survey - I'm doing ti as I type here, so will probably be some overlap with otehr appends previously. Dunno if the survey has been updated since those, or not

Qn "Do you use a normal household outlet or A 7kW (level 2) fast charger for your electric vehicle at home? "
I cannot seelct both options! I use both, for different purposes.
My 7kW charger gets used when I'm in a hurry to charge, or my solar panels are exporting more electricity than the car can take (3 kW), so it makes sense to maximise my use of this free power. My 13A mains charger gets used, often at 6A (1.4 kW), when I want the car charged, but there's no rush, and maybe it's a cloudy-ish day and my panels might only be exporting 1 kW, so the slower I can charge the car, the more of the electricity going into is is free solar power. I'm retired, so can often charge my Evs 45 mile range over a couple of days or so.

Otherwise, looks good!

Thanks for the response! I have reverted back to accepting answers based on any type of EV, and instead have adjusted questions which were appropriate for pure BEV owners only. I have also changed the charger question accordingly so that both options can be selected.