Abstract:

This analysis is based on granular, annual information on the location of public charging infrastructure and the battery-electric vehicle ownership rate across 356 Norwegian LAU-2 municipalities between 2009 and 2019. The authors focus on areas in which the first public charging infrastructure was installed in this time period. In these mostly rural areas, the establishment of the first public charging station initiated adoption. The findings show that on average, an increase of the local electric vehicle ownership rate by 1.5 percentage points or 200% over five years. The results are robust to anticipatory effects. They also remain unaffected from different treatment thresholds: the median number of public chargers in a municipality between 2009 and 2019 or the median density of public charging points per 1000 inhabitants in the same time frame. While the authors cannot fully rule out reverse effects, they identify public charging infrastructure as a stimulus to the diffusion of battery electric vehicles.