Estimating the Pollution Abatement Potential of Electric Vehicle Subsidies

Erich Muehlegger and David Rapson

Institute of Transportation Studies, Working Paper Series from Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Davis

Abstract: The true net environmental benefit of an electric vehicle is relative to the vehicle that an electric vehicle buyer would have bought and driven had they not opted for an electric vehicle. This “counterfactual” vehicle cannot be observed, but its fuel economy can be estimated. We use quasi-experimental variation in a generous California electric vehicle subsidy program to show that buyers of electric vehicles would have, on average, purchased fuel-efficient gasoline-powered cars had they not gone electric.

Keywords: Engineering; Electric vehicles; user side subsidies; environmental impacts; consumer behavior; market share; automobile ownership; policy analysis; fuel consumption (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-07-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene, nep-env, nep-reg and nep-tre
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