IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/rensus/v113y2019ic23.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Overcoming the shortcomings of U.S. plug-in electric vehicle policies

Author

Listed:
  • Carley, Sanya
  • Zirogiannis, Nikolaos
  • Siddiki, Saba
  • Duncan, Denvil
  • Graham, John D.

Abstract

We evaluate plug-in electric vehicle (PEV) policies currently implemented across the U.S. and the potential for these policies to facilitate widespread PEV diffusion. We examine the relationship between overlapping regulatory and fiscal policies at the federal and state levels of government. We argue that the current suite of policies is not as effective as it could be, and potentially more expensive. Our analysis suggests the existence of a tradeoff between the goals of increasing the market penetration of PEVs and that of limiting greenhouse gas emissions from the light-duty vehicle fleet. The way federal and state policies interact puts those two goals at odds, at least in the short-term. Drawing from the policy and economics literatures, we summarize a series of recommendations and incentives that could deliver a more balanced approach to the achievement of those two policy goals. We conclude with some research suggestions.

Suggested Citation

  • Carley, Sanya & Zirogiannis, Nikolaos & Siddiki, Saba & Duncan, Denvil & Graham, John D., 2019. "Overcoming the shortcomings of U.S. plug-in electric vehicle policies," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 1-1.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:rensus:v:113:y:2019:i:c:23
    DOI: 10.1016/j.rser.2019.109291
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S136403211930499X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.rser.2019.109291?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Egbue, Ona & Long, Suzanna, 2012. "Barriers to widespread adoption of electric vehicles: An analysis of consumer attitudes and perceptions," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 717-729.
    2. Shanjun Li & Lang Tong & Jianwei Xing & Yiyi Zhou, 2017. "The Market for Electric Vehicles: Indirect Network Effects and Policy Design," Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, University of Chicago Press, vol. 4(1), pages 89-133.
    3. Green, Erin H. & Skerlos, Steven J. & Winebrake, James J., 2014. "Increasing electric vehicle policy efficiency and effectiveness by reducing mainstream market bias," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 562-566.
    4. Dumortier, Jerome & Kent, Matthew W. & Payton, Seth B., 2016. "Plug-in vehicles and the future of road infrastructure funding in the United States," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 187-195.
    5. Congressional Budget Office, 2012. "Effects of Federal Tax Credits for the Purchase of Electric Vehicles," Reports 43576, Congressional Budget Office.
    6. Congressional Budget Office, 2012. "Effects of Federal Tax Credits for the Purchase of Electric Vehicles," Reports 43576, Congressional Budget Office.
    7. Unruh, Gregory C., 2000. "Understanding carbon lock-in," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 28(12), pages 817-830, October.
    8. Turrentine, Thomas S. & Kurani, Kenneth S., 2007. "Car buyers and fuel economy?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(2), pages 1213-1223, February.
    9. Graff Zivin, Joshua S. & Kotchen, Matthew J. & Mansur, Erin T., 2014. "Spatial and temporal heterogeneity of marginal emissions: Implications for electric cars and other electricity-shifting policies," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 107(PA), pages 248-268.
    10. Gallagher, Kelly Sims & Muehlegger, Erich, 2011. "Giving green to get green? Incentives and consumer adoption of hybrid vehicle technology," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 61(1), pages 1-15, January.
    11. Al-Alawi, Baha M. & Bradley, Thomas H., 2013. "Total cost of ownership, payback, and consumer preference modeling of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 488-506.
    12. Hunt Allcott & Christopher Knittel, 2019. "Are Consumers Poorly Informed about Fuel Economy? Evidence from Two Experiments," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 11(1), pages 1-37, February.
    13. Breetz, Hanna L. & Salon, Deborah, 2018. "Do electric vehicles need subsidies? Ownership costs for conventional, hybrid, and electric vehicles in 14 U.S. cities," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 238-249.
    14. Greene, David L. & Evans, David H. & Hiestand, John, 2013. "Survey evidence on the willingness of U.S. consumers to pay for automotive fuel economy," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 1539-1550.
    15. Axsen, Jonn & Kurani, Kenneth S, 2008. "The Early U.S. Market for PHEVs: Anticipating Consumer Awareness, Recharge Potential, Design Priorities and Energy Impacts," Institute of Transportation Studies, Working Paper Series qt4491w7kf, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Davis.
    16. James M. Sallee, 2011. "The Taxation of Fuel Economy," Tax Policy and the Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 25(1), pages 1-38.
    17. Stephen P. Holland & Erin T. Mansur & Nicholas Z. Muller & Andrew J. Yates, 2016. "Are There Environmental Benefits from Driving Electric Vehicles? The Importance of Local Factors," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(12), pages 3700-3729, December.
    18. Peng, Minghong & Liu, Lian & Jiang, Chuanwen, 2012. "A review on the economic dispatch and risk management of the large-scale plug-in electric vehicles (PHEVs)-penetrated power systems," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 16(3), pages 1508-1515.
    19. Goulder, Lawrence H. & Jacobsen, Mark R. & van Benthem, Arthur A., 2012. "Unintended consequences from nested state and federal regulations: The case of the Pavley greenhouse-gas-per-mile limits," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 63(2), pages 187-207.
    20. Bandivadekar, Anup & Cheah, Lynette & Evans, Christopher & Groode, Tiffany & Heywood, John & Kasseris, Emmanuel & Kromer, Matthew & Weiss, Malcolm, 2008. "Reducing the fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions of the US vehicle fleet," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(7), pages 2754-2760, July.
    21. Turrentine, Tom & Kurani, Kenneth S, 2007. "Car buyers and fuel economy?," Institute of Transportation Studies, Working Paper Series qt56x845v4, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Davis.
    22. Traut, Elizabeth & Hendrickson, Chris & Klampfl, Erica & Liu, Yimin & Michalek, Jeremy J., 2012. "Optimal design and allocation of electrified vehicles and dedicated charging infrastructure for minimum life cycle greenhouse gas emissions and cost," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 524-534.
    23. Congressional Budget Office, 2012. "Effects of Federal Tax Credits for the Purchase of Electric Vehicles," Reports 43576, Congressional Budget Office.
    24. Dumortier, Jerome & Siddiki, Saba & Carley, Sanya & Cisney, Joshua & Krause, Rachel M. & Lane, Bradley W. & Rupp, John A. & Graham, John D., 2015. "Effects of providing total cost of ownership information on consumers’ intent to purchase a hybrid or plug-in electric vehicle," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 71-86.
    25. DeShazo, J.R. & Sheldon, Tamara L. & Carson, Richard T., 2017. "Designing policy incentives for cleaner technologies: Lessons from California's plug-in electric vehicle rebate program," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 18-43.
    26. Archsmith, James & Kendall, Alissa & Rapson, David, 2015. "From Cradle to Junkyard: Assessing the Life Cycle Greenhouse Gas Benefits of Electric Vehicles," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 72-90.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Debnath, Ramit & Bardhan, Ronita & Reiner, David M. & Miller, J.R., 2021. "Political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental dimensions of electric vehicle adoption in the United States: A social-media interaction analysis," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 152(C).
    2. Bruno Jetin, 2020. "Who will control the electric vehicle market?," International Journal of Automotive Technology and Management, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 20(2), pages 156-177.
    3. Liu, Chang & Liu, Yuan & Zhang, Dayong & Xie, Chunping, 2022. "The capital market responses to new energy vehicle (NEV) subsidies: An event study on China," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 105(C).
    4. Pan, Shuai & Fulton, Lewis M. & Roy, Anirban & Jung, Jia & Choi, Yunsoo & Gao, H. Oliver, 2021. "Shared use of electric autonomous vehicles: Air quality and health impacts of future mobility in the United States," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 149(C).
    5. Lopez, Neil Stephen & Tria, Lew Andrew & Tayo, Leo Allen & Cruzate, Rovinna Janel & Oppus, Carlos & Cabacungan, Paul & Isla, Igmedio & Ansay, Arjun & Garcia, Teodinis & Cabarrubias-Dela Cruz, Kevien &, 2021. "Societal cost-benefit analysis of electric vehicles in the Philippines with the inclusion of impacts to balance of payments," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 150(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Green, Erin H. & Skerlos, Steven J. & Winebrake, James J., 2014. "Increasing electric vehicle policy efficiency and effectiveness by reducing mainstream market bias," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 562-566.
    2. Xing, Jianwei & Leard, Benjamin & Li, Shanjun, 2021. "What does an electric vehicle replace?," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 107(C).
    3. Jenn, Alan & Azevedo, Inês L. & Michalek, Jeremy J., 2019. "Alternative-fuel-vehicle policy interactions increase U.S. greenhouse gas emissions," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 396-407.
    4. Jianwei Xing & Benjamin Leard & Shanjun Li, 2019. "What Does an Electric Vehicle Replace?," NBER Working Papers 25771, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Seiho Kim & Jaesik Lee & Chulung Lee, 2017. "Does Driving Range of Electric Vehicles Influence Electric Vehicle Adoption?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(10), pages 1-15, October.
    6. Alberini, Anna & Di Cosmo, Valeria & Bigano, Andrea, 2019. "How are fuel efficient cars priced? Evidence from eight EU countries," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 134(C).
    7. Zunian Luo, 2022. "Powering Up a Slow Charging Market: How Do Government Subsidies Affect Charging Station Supply?," Papers 2210.14908, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2023.
    8. Zirogiannis, Nikolaos & Duncan, Denvil & Carley, Sanya & Siddiki, Saba & Graham, John D., 2019. "The effect of CAFE standards on vehicle sales projections: A Total Cost of Ownership approach," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 70-87.
    9. Dumortier, Jerome & Siddiki, Saba & Carley, Sanya & Cisney, Joshua & Krause, Rachel M. & Lane, Bradley W. & Rupp, John A. & Graham, John D., 2015. "Effects of providing total cost of ownership information on consumers’ intent to purchase a hybrid or plug-in electric vehicle," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 71-86.
    10. Clinton, Bentley C. & Steinberg, Daniel C., 2019. "Providing the Spark: Impact of financial incentives on battery electric vehicle adoption," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 98(C).
    11. Muehlegger, Erich & Rapson, David S., 2022. "Subsidizing low- and middle-income adoption of electric vehicles: Quasi-experimental evidence from California," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 216(C).
    12. James Bushnell & David Rapson, 2022. "The Electric Ceiling: Limits and Costs of Full Electrification," Working Papers 2220, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
    13. Chandra, Minal, 2022. "Investigating the impact of policies, socio-demography and national commitments on electric-vehicle demand: Cross-country study," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 103(C).
    14. Krause, Rachel M. & Carley, Sanya R. & Lane, Bradley W. & Graham, John D., 2013. "Perception and reality: Public knowledge of plug-in electric vehicles in 21 U.S. cities," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 433-440.
    15. Santos, Georgina & Rembalski, Sebastian, 2021. "Do electric vehicles need subsidies in the UK?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 149(C).
    16. Shanjun Li & Yiyi Zhou, 2015. "Dynamics of Technology Adoption and Critical Mass: The Case of U.S. Electric Vehicle Market," Working Papers 15-10, NET Institute.
    17. Lohawala, Nafisa, 2023. "Roadblock or Accelerator? The Effect of Electric Vehicle Subsidy Elimination," RFF Working Paper Series 23-13, Resources for the Future.
    18. DeShazo, J.R. & Sheldon, Tamara L. & Carson, Richard T., 2017. "Designing policy incentives for cleaner technologies: Lessons from California's plug-in electric vehicle rebate program," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 18-43.
    19. Nathan Delacrétaz & Bruno Lanz & Jeremy van Dijk, 2020. "The chicken or the egg: Technology adoption and network infrastructure in the market for electric vehicles," IRENE Working Papers 20-08, IRENE Institute of Economic Research.
    20. Greene, David L. & Greenwald, Judith M. & Ciez, Rebecca E., 2020. "U.S. fuel economy and greenhouse gas standards: What have they achieved and what have we learned?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:rensus:v:113:y:2019:i:c:23. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/600126/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.