Effectiveness and Heterogeneous Effects of Purchase Grants for Electric Vehicles

Peter Haan, Adrián Santonja and Aleksandar Zaklan ()

No 2032, Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin from DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research

Abstract: We evaluate German purchase subsidies for battery electric vehicles (BEVs) and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) using data on new vehicle registrations in Germany during 2015-2022. We account for confounding time trends and interacting EU-level CO2 standards using neighboring countries as a control group. The program was cost-ineffective, as only 40% of BEV and 25% of PHEV registrations were subsidy-induced, and had strong distributional effects, with greater uptake in wealthier and greener counties. The implied abatement cost of 870 euro per ton of CO2 for BEVs and 2,470 euro for PHEVs suggests that subsidies to PHEVs were especially cost-ineffective.

Keywords: Decarbonizing road transport; electric mobility; purchase subsidies; policy effectiveness; distributional effects of climate policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H23 Q54 Q58 R48 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 35 p.
Date: 2023
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dcm, nep-des, nep-ene, nep-env and nep-tre
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Effectiveness and Heterogeneous Effects of Purchase Grants for Electric Vehicles (2023)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:diw:diwwpp:dp2032

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