A Comparison between New Energy Vehicles Owner Reviews And Internal Combustion Engine Vehicle Owner Reviews in the Chinese Market

Abstract

The issue of energy has received much attention from all aspects across the world, including the automotive industry. Both policies and technology development have pushed automotive manufacturers to turn to new energy vehicles (NEVs) from traditional internal-combustion engine vehicles (ICEVs). To understand how consumers in the market perceive these two different types of vehicles, the study sets out to investigate car owners’ reviews of both types of vehicles. A total of 30000 reviews from 20 models (10 from each type) including reports of the most satisfying parts and the most unsatisfying parts of the vehicles are analyzed. The results show that the two types of car owners demonstrate differences when discussing satisfaction in dimensions of exterior design, engine power, and space. The results also show that they demonstrate differences when discussing unsatisfaction in dimensions of interior design, space, range and battery, new car pickup time, and engine power, of which the latter three are specific to vehicle type. Finally, the study also finds a stronger unsatisfied sentiment in ICEV owners’ reviews than in NEV owners’ reviews.