Abstract:

Many factors are helping to spur electric vehicle growth in markets across the United States. This paper assesses the U.S. electric vehicle market and the actions driving it. The assessment catalogues actions in place, identifies exemplary practices, and discerns links between various electric vehicle promotion actions and electric vehicle sales. The analysis focuses on the 50 most populous metropolitan areas, which together represented about 81% of the 2016 U.S. electric vehicle market. The work statistically analyzes the connections among various state and local policies, public and workplace charging infrastructure, consumer incentives, model availability, and the share of new vehicles that are plug-in electric (both fully electric and plug-in hybrid). The activities and policies analyzed in this report help to explain why the electric vehicle market is growing more quickly in some areas than others. The authors catalogued dozens of unique electric vehicle actions and found statistically significant relationships between the electric vehicle share of new light-duty vehicle sales and model availability, consumer incentives, public charging infrastructure, workplace charging, HOV lane access, and city promotion actions. The more markets that are embracing the leading electric vehicle policies, the faster the transition to an electric vehicle fleet will occur.