IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bfi/wpaper/2021-17.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Low Energy: Estimating Electric Vehicle Electricity Use

Author

Listed:
  • Fiona Burlig

    (University of Chicago)

  • James B. Bushnell
  • David Rapson

    (University of California, Davis)

  • Catherine D. Wolfram

    (University of California, Berkeley - Economic Analysis & Policy Group; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER))

Abstract

We provide the first at-scale estimate of electric vehicle (EV) home charging. Previous estimates are either based on surveys that reach conflicting conclusions, or are extrapolated from a small, unrepresentative sample of households with dedicated EV meters. We combine billions of hourly electricity meter measurements with address-level EV registration records from California households. The average EV increases overall household load by 2.9 kilowatt-hours per day, less than half the amount assumed by state regulators. Our results imply that EVs travel 5,300 miles per year, under half of the US fleet average. This raises questions about transportation electrification for climate policy.

Suggested Citation

  • Fiona Burlig & James B. Bushnell & David Rapson & Catherine D. Wolfram, 2021. "Low Energy: Estimating Electric Vehicle Electricity Use," Working Papers 2021-17, Becker Friedman Institute for Research In Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:bfi:wpaper:2021-17
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://repec.bfi.uchicago.edu/RePEc/pdfs/BFI_WP_2021-17.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Lucas W. Davis, 2024. "The Economic Determinants of Heat Pump Adoption," Environmental and Energy Policy and the Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 5(1), pages 162-199.
    2. Ashley Nunes & Lucas Woodley & Philip Rossetti, 2022. "Re-thinking procurement incentives for electric vehicles to achieve net-zero emissions," Nature Sustainability, Nature, vol. 5(6), pages 527-532, June.
    3. Asad Waqar Malik & Zahid Anwar, 2022. "Do Charging Stations Benefit from Cryptojacking? A Novel Framework for Its Financial Impact Analysis on Electric Vehicles," Energies, MDPI, vol. 15(16), pages 1-15, August.
    4. Ross McKitrick, 2024. "Economic implications of a phased‐in EV mandate in Canada," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 57(4), pages 1434-1458, November.
    5. David S. Rapson & James B. Bushnell, 2022. "The Electric Ceiling: Limits and Costs of Full Electrification," NBER Working Papers 30593, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. 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).
    7. Peplinski, McKenna & Dilkina, Bistra & Chen, Mo & Silva, Sam J. & Ban-Weiss, George A. & Sanders, Kelly T., 2024. "A machine learning framework to estimate residential electricity demand based on smart meter electricity, climate, building characteristics, and socioeconomic datasets," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 357(C).
    8. Grigolon, Laura & Park, Eunseong & Remmy, Kevin, 2024. "Fueling Electrification: The Impact of Gas Prices on Hybrid Car Usage," CEPR Discussion Papers 18806, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    9. Nehiba, Cody, 2024. "Electric vehicle usage, pollution damages, and the electricity price elasticity of driving," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 124(C).
    10. Tommy Lundgren & Mattias Vesterberg, 2024. "Efficiency in electricity distribution in Sweden and the effects of small-scale generation, electric vehicles and dynamic tariffs," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 62(2), pages 121-137, October.
    11. Fonseca, Camila & Jiang, Haiyue & Zeerak, Raihana & Zhao, Jerry Zhirong, 2024. "Explaining the adoption of electric vehicle fees across the United States," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 149(C), pages 139-149.
    12. Chakraborty, Debapriya & Hardman, Scott & Tal, Gil, 2021. "Integrating Plug-in Electric Vehicles (PEVs) into Household Fleets - Factors Influencing Miles Traveled by PEV Owners in California," Institute of Transportation Studies, Working Paper Series qt2214q937, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Davis.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • Q4 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy
    • R4 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Transportation Economics

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:bfi:wpaper:2021-17. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Toni Shears The email address of this maintainer does not seem to be valid anymore. Please ask Toni Shears to update the entry or send us the correct address (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/mfichus.html .

    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.