Trends in electric vehicles research

Electrification of vehicles has been recognised as a key part of meeting global climate change targets and a key aspect of sustainable transport. Here, an integrative and bird's-eye view of scholarly research on Electric Vehicles (EV) is provided with a focus on an objective and quantitative determination of research trends. The analyses suggest that areas of EV research linked to (i) charging infrastructure, (ii) EV adoption, (iii) thermal management systems and (iv) routing problem have been the distinct trending topics in recent years. While hybrid EV proves to have been a dominant keyword, its frequency of use has either flattened out in recent years or is notably on the decline across major subfields of EV research. The findings provide objective indications about the directions to which EV research is currently headed. A secondary outcome is the determination of references that have been most instrumental in developing each major stream of EV research.