Study: alternate fuel adoption will be slow

A competitively priced alternative-fuel vehicle may not swiftly capture a large share of the auto market even if it's three-times more fuel-efficient than a traditional car, according to an MIT study.

Philosophers have long puzzled over the question of which comes first, the chicken or the egg? And the same conundrum may bedevil the makers of alternative-fuel vehicles - consumers won't consider buying such vehicles until a critical mass of them is actually on the road, the study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology suggests, and energy companies won't build alternative-fuel filling stations until they're certain about future demand.

MIT researchers studying market and consumer behavior at the Sloan School of Management call the situation a Catch 22, according to the MIT News Office.

"Until many alternative-fuel (AF) vehicles are on the road, people won't consider buying one - so there won't be many on the road," the MIT News Office noted in an e-mail on the research.

The track record for introducing new technologies in the past is a poor one, researchers noted, so "dethroning" the gasoline-consuming internal combustion engine won't be easy.

Still, there is a bright side.

If policy incentives to switch to AF vehicles are kept in place long enough, adoption will reach a level at which the market will begin to grow on its own, researchers said, but "'long enough' may be a surprisingly long time."
(By Chris Reidy, Globe staff)