Marcus Rooth

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Research Project

Going Electric: EV Adoption and Weather Impacts

Bio

Hello and welcome to my Signify page!

I am a 4th year ProCom student with a passion for sports and am looking to pursue a career in human resources once I finish my undergraduate degree. Some quick facts about me that you might find interesting are:

  1. Last year I had a co-op placement with Ontario Power Generation where I was a member of the employee communications team. While I was working there, I got to learn about energy demand within the province and even got the opportunity to go inside the Pickering and Darlington Nuclear Stations.
  2. I purchased a vehicle last year and my experience of looking for a car in the post covid world played a significant role in me choosing my research topic.
  3. Outside of school, I work at a home developer in North York and enjoy golfing even though I am horrible at it.

 

Research Summary

With electric vehicles growing in popularity and the Canadian government constantly looking for ways to reduce carbon emissions, I thought that electric vehicles would be a great topic to research. My research project used qualitative and quantitative methods to examine what makes people switch from gasoline powered vehicles to electric, what aspects of their EV do owners value the most, how does cold weather impact electric vehicles, and how do these impacts shape the experiences of EV owners. The objective of this project was to develop an understanding of what factors have the biggest influence on making people go electric and if a fully electric future is even possible in a country like Canada.

Research Poster

An infographic, 'Going Electric: EV Adoption & Weather Impacts,' by Marcus Rooth, features a white electric car plugged into a charger. It details research on EV adoption, addressing general population hesitation, the role of symbolism (pride, status, futurism) in ownership, and how cold weather affects EV owners. Methodology involved text and image analysis of Reddit threads and Instagram posts, coding for themes like range, commute, charging access, weather, and cost. Findings include three bar charts: the first, from Reddit, shows range is the most discussed theme affecting EV enjoyment in cold weather; the second, from Instagram, illustrates the frequency of symbolism determinants per post; and the third, from Instagram and Reddit, highlights driving experience and cost/maintenance as primary reasons for EV ownership. Conclusions recommend exploring rural EV owner experiences.

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