Consumer credit and the rise of electric vehicles

Yue Wang

No 471, SAFE Working Paper Series from Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE

Abstract: I study the credit channel of the electric-vehicle (EV) transition using more than 1.8 million German auto loans and leases. I show that EV financing contracts default significantly less often than comparable internal combustion engine vehicle (ICEV) contracts-particularly among lower-income borrowers. Following the 2020 expansion of German federal EV subsidies, lenders adjusted EV financing relative to comparable ICEV contracts. Independent banks tightened EV loan terms while lending to lower-income borrowers. Captive banks also tightened EV loans, mainly through non-price terms, while accommodating subsidy-period EV demand more readily through leasing.

Keywords: Electric vehicles; Auto loans; Auto leasing; Captive banks; Credit risk (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G21 G23 G50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene and nep-tre
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/338128/1/1965368255.pdf (application/pdf)

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:zbw:safewp:338128

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in SAFE Working Paper Series from Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().