Measuring the equity impacts of government subsidies for electric vehicles

Brian Caulfield, Dylan Furszyfer, Agnieszka Stefaniec and Aoife Foley

Energy, 2022, vol. 248, issue C

Abstract: A shift to electric vehicles (EV) is seen as one of the main methods to decarbonise the transportation sector. However, issues have also been raised regarding charging infrastructure, EV reliability and range, as well as the battery environmental and social credentials. Notwithstanding governments, intergovernmental organisations, and research entities have ploughed ahead to promote this transition, but the challenge is the uptake and public acceptance. Grants and financial subsidies have been developed to facilitate this shift. Our study investigates the characteristics of the private EV household charger population using a regression model and spatial analysis to determine the influences of income, car ownership and economic status on EV take up rates. Data on the installation of EV household chargers are used in this paper as a proxy for EV ownership, due to data limitations. The results indicate that 1) urban areas are more likely to see higher concentrations of EV ownership, 2) an income and equity gap exists between those that have adapted electric mobility. This finding is very important because it suggests that lower income categories may have a financial barrier to shifting to EVs.

Keywords: Electric vehicles; Charging points; Household income; Social acceptance; Spatial analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544222004911
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:248:y:2022:i:c:s0360544222004911

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2022.123588

Access Statistics for this article

Energy is currently edited by Henrik Lund and Mark J. Kaiser

More articles in Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().