Is the UK Ready for Electric Vehicle Adoption?

Systems analysis evaluating the UK's readiness for widespread electric vehicle adoption — examining technical, social, political, economic and environmental factors, identifying systemic barriers and recommending interventions to accelerate the transition.

The UK's transition to electric vehicles is shaped by interconnected technical, economic, environmental and behavioural factors with competing stakeholder priorities. The team needed to structure this complex, ill-defined national policy challenge before recommendations could be made.

Evaluate the UK's readiness for widespread EV adoption

Objectives

• Identify systemic barriers across technical, social, political, economic and environmental dimensions
• Explore stakeholder perspectives and competing priorities
• Recommend interventions to accelerate EV adoption

• Applied Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) to structure the problem
• Developed a Rich Picture, CATWOE, Root Definition and Purposeful Activity Model
• Built SODA cognitive maps to surface stakeholder reasoning
• Conducted stakeholder analysis and supporting research

Team lead and primary contributor across the full systems analysis. I coordinated task distribution across the group, ensured balanced workload allocation, and reviewed teammates' contributions for quality and consistency before final submission. I was responsible for more than 50% of the overall group deliverables, contributing to the development of the Rich Picture, CATWOE analysis, Root Definition, and Purposeful Activity Model, building SODA cognitive maps to surface stakeholder reasoning and competing priorities, conducting stakeholder identification and analysis, supporting the literature research, and contributing to the group report and final recommendations. Beyond my own deliverables, I facilitated team coordination throughout, kept the group aligned on deadlines and responsibilities, and ensured the final report read as a single coherent submission rather than disconnected individual sections.

• Rich Picture (SSM)
• CATWOE Analysis (SSM)
• Root Definition (SSM)
• Purposeful Activity Model (SSM)
• SODA Cognitive Map
• Stakeholder Analysis
• Team coordination and task distribution across the group
• Quality review of all group deliverables before submission
• Group Report including structured recommendations for improving UK EV readiness

• Challenge 1 — Structuring a complex, ill-defined national policy problem
  EV adoption is shaped by interconnected technical, economic, social, political, and environmental factors with no single clear problem statement or agreed solution. Applying SSM was the right response — it provided a structured way to explore the situation from multiple perspectives before moving toward recommendations, rather than jumping to solutions prematurely. The Rich Picture and CATWOE analysis were particularly useful in making the complexity visible and navigable.
• Challenge 2 — Reconciling competing stakeholder priorities across a national transition
  Different stakeholder groups — government, manufacturers, energy companies, consumers, and environmental bodies — had fundamentally different priorities and constraints around EV adoption. The SODA cognitive mapping helped surface these differences and allowed the team to identify where priorities overlapped and where genuine tensions existed, which directly informed the recommendations produced.

• Led team coordination across the group, ensuring all deliverables were completed on time, consistently formatted, and submitted as a coherent final report
• Identified charging infrastructure gaps, consumer range anxiety, grid capacity limitations, and policy inconsistency as the four most significant systemic barriers to widespread UK EV adoption
• Found that government policy incentives and investment in public charging infrastructure were the highest-leverage interventions for accelerating the transition
• Produced structured, evidence-based recommendations covering infrastructure investment, public awareness, policy consistency, and stakeholder collaboration
• Demonstrated practical application of SSM and SODA frameworks to a real, complex national policy challenge
• Group report received a grade of A

Key artefacts produced on this project. Confidential client material is appropriately withheld.