EV Across Europe

Evidence map

Total cost of ownership country: what the evidence base looks like

13 publications, 0 of them trials and 0 syntheses. This page describes the shape of that literature rather than summarising its conclusions.

Updated 4 min read 13 citations

Three-lane British motorway with traffic in both directions under a grey sky
Klaus with K · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons
What the evidence on total cost of ownership country is made of Of 13 publications on this topic, the breakdown by study type: 13 other. 13other (13)
13 publications, by study type. Volume is not strength — the same count can be a settled question or a pile of commentary, and which one it is depends almost entirely on this breakdown. Harvested from PubMed and Crossref; publication type as recorded by the source.

What this literature is made of

A reasonable volume of literature, but weighted towards reviews and observational work rather than trials. That is enough to describe a phenomenon and rarely enough to establish that an intervention works.

The distinction that matters most is between synthesis and primary research. A meta-analysis pools trials and is the closest thing to a settled answer a field produces. A narrative review is one group's reading of the same material and can be selective without being dishonest. Counting them together, which most citation counts do, obscures exactly the thing you want to know.

When the total cost of ownership country literature was published Publication years for the 13 papers on this topic, grouped into bands from before 2015 through to 2023 onwards. 2023 onwards6 papers2015-20193 papers2020-20222 papersBefore 20152 papers
Still active. The most recent paper here is from 2026, so this is a field where an answer written today may not hold for long. Publication years as recorded by PubMed and Crossref.

How this page is built

Everything above is computed from the citations this site harvested from PubMed and Crossref, not written by hand. When the weekly harvest finds a new paper on this topic, these counts change and the characterisation changes with them. That is the point: a hand-written claim about how strong an evidence base is starts decaying the day it is written.

Publication type is taken as the source records it. That is imperfect — journals label inconsistently, and a paper indexed as a "review" may be a systematic one — so treat the bands as approximate. They are accurate enough to distinguish a trial literature from a commentary literature, which is the distinction that matters.

Made-up bed in a three-person internal medicine ward room
玄史生 · CC0 · Wikimedia Commons

The strongest work on this topic

Ordered by study design first, then recency. The full set is listed in the references below.

  1. How to Improve the Total Cost of Ownership of Electric Vehicles: An Analysis of the Light Commercial Vehicle Segment — Lebeau P, Macharis C, Van Mierlo J, 2019, journal article
  2. Ownership Levies and Electric Vehicle Adoption: A Total Cost of Ownership and Legal Analysis of Ukraine’s Fiscal Reversal — Vovk Y, Vovk I, Martsenko N et al., 2026, journal article
  3. Route-Specific Total Cost of Ownership for Electric Trucks: A Danish Distribution Case Study — Iversen L, Rehmeier C, 2026, journal article
  4. Total cost of ownership of electric and gasoline used vehicles — Woody M, Yin S, Green A et al., 2026, journal article
  5. Total Cost of Ownership of Electric Buses in Europe — Ghotge R, van Rooij D, van Breukelen S, 2025, journal article
  6. Study of the Total Ownership Cost of Electric Vehicles in Romania — Dulău L, 2024, journal article
  7. Electric and gasoline vehicle total cost of ownership across US cities — Woody M, Adderly S, Bohra R et al., 2024, journal article
  8. Vehicle to Grid Impacts on the Total Cost of Ownership for Electric Vehicle Drivers — Huber D, De Clerck Q, De Cauwer C et al., 2021, journal article
  9. Analyzing Factors of Hybrid Electric Vehicle Adoption Using Total Cost of Ownership — Lee J, Kwon Y, 2020, journal article
  10. Taxation of Electric Vehicles in Europe: A Methodology for Comparison — Hauff K, Pfahl S, Degenkolb R, 2018, journal article
How much research is there on total cost of ownership country?
13 publications are indexed here, of which 0 are trials and 0 are syntheses.
Does more research mean a stronger conclusion?
No. Composition matters more than volume — five randomised trials support a claim far better than fifty commentaries, and citation counts do not distinguish between them.
How current is this?
The most recent paper indexed here is from 2026. The set is refreshed weekly from PubMed and Crossref.
Why does this page not tell me the answer?
Because summarising a literature into a conclusion requires reading it, and doing that automatically is how confident nonsense gets published. This page tells you how much weight a conclusion could bear; the articles on this site do the interpreting.

References

Every citation below links to the original peer-reviewed record on PubMed or via DOI. Nothing here is a substitute for medical advice.

  1. How to Improve the Total Cost of Ownership of Electric Vehicles: An Analysis of the Light Commercial Vehicle Segment Lebeau P, Macharis C, Van Mierlo J · World Electric Vehicle Journal · 2019 · Journal article DOI
  2. Total cost of ownership of electric and gasoline used vehicles Woody M, Yin S, Green A, et al. · Environmental Research Letters · 2026 · Journal article DOI
  3. Ownership Levies and Electric Vehicle Adoption: A Total Cost of Ownership and Legal Analysis of Ukraine’s Fiscal Reversal Vovk Y, Vovk I, Martsenko N, et al. · World Electric Vehicle Journal · 2026 · Journal article DOI
  4. Route-Specific Total Cost of Ownership for Electric Trucks: A Danish Distribution Case Study Iversen L, Rehmeier C · World Electric Vehicle Journal · 2026 · Journal article DOI
  5. Total Cost of Ownership of Electric Buses in Europe Ghotge R, van Rooij D, van Breukelen S · World Electric Vehicle Journal · 2025 · Journal article DOI
  6. Electric and gasoline vehicle total cost of ownership across US cities Woody M, Adderly S, Bohra R, et al. · Journal of Industrial Ecology · 2024 · Journal article DOI
  7. Study of the Total Ownership Cost of Electric Vehicles in Romania Dulău L · World Electric Vehicle Journal · 2024 · Journal article DOI
  8. Vehicle to Grid Impacts on the Total Cost of Ownership for Electric Vehicle Drivers Huber D, De Clerck Q, De Cauwer C, et al. · World Electric Vehicle Journal · 2021 · Journal article DOI
  9. Analyzing Factors of Hybrid Electric Vehicle Adoption Using Total Cost of Ownership Lee J, Kwon Y · The Journal of Social Sciences Research · 2020 · Journal article DOI
  10. Taxation of Electric Vehicles in Europe: A Methodology for Comparison Hauff K, Pfahl S, Degenkolb R · World Electric Vehicle Journal · 2018 · Journal article DOI
  11. How Total is a Total Cost of Ownership? De Clerck Q, Van Lier T, Lebeau P, et al. · World Electric Vehicle Journal · 2016 · Journal article DOI
  12. Electric versus conventional vehicles for logistics: A total cost of ownership Macharis C, Lebeau P, Van Mierlo J, et al. · World Electric Vehicle Journal · 2013 · Journal article DOI
  13. How expensive are electric vehicles? A total cost of ownership analysis. Lebeau K, Lebeau P, Macharis C, et al. · World Electric Vehicle Journal · 2013 · Journal article DOI