How much are electric vehicles driven?

ABSTRACT

The prospect for electric vehicles as a climate change solution hinges on their ability to reduce gasoline consumption. But this depends on how many miles electric vehicles are driven and on how many miles would have otherwise been driven in gasoline-powered vehicles. Using newly-available U.S. nationally representative data, this paper finds that electric vehicles are driven considerably fewer miles per year on average than gasoline-powered vehicles. The difference is highly statistically significant and holds for both all-electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles, for both single- and multiple-vehicle households, and both inside and outside California. The paper discusses potential explanations and policy implications. Overall, the evidence suggests that today’s electric vehicles imply smaller environmental benefits than previously believed.

KEYWORDS:

• Electric vehicles
• plug-in hybrids
• vehicle miles traveled
• rebound effect

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• D12
• L62
• Q41
• Q54
• Q55

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Severin Borenstein, Chris Knittel, Jing Li, Andrew Yates, and seminar participants at UC Berkeley for helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

I have not received any financial compensation for this project nor do I have any financial relationships that relate to this research.

Notes

¹ The overall average of about 10,000 miles driven per year is consistent with previous studies using data from the 2009 NHTS (see, e.g. Archsmith, Kendall, and Rapson 2015). Similarly, Levinson (forthcoming), shows using data from the 2009 NHTS that conventional hybrids tends to be driven more than gasoline- and diesel-powered vehicles, consistent with the two right-most bars in Figure 1.

² A related literature on gasoline-powered vehicles finds that vehicle buyers are relatively attentive to future operating costs (Busse, Knittel, and Zettelmeyer 2013; Allcott and Wozny 2014; Sallee, West, and Fan 2016). These studies are closely related to an older literature on a broader class of energy-related investments (Hausman 1979; Dubin and McFadden 1984).

³ Early electric vehicle adopters were even able in some cases to charge their vehicles for free. During its early years, Tesla famously offered buyers unlimited free charging for life on its fast-charging network, though this practice was ended for buyers placing an order after 1 January 2017. See, e.g., Tim Higgins, ‘Tesla Motors Plans to Charge for Its Quick-Charge Access’ Wall Street Journal, 6 November 2016.

⁴ In related work, Archsmith et al. (2017) shows that households substitute between vehicle attributes when deciding which vehicles to purchase. For example, a household with one fuel-efficient vehicle may be more likely to purchase a second vehicle that is less fuel-efficient.

⁵ Income differences, in contrast, are unlikely to explain the pattern. Previous research has shown that electric vehicle ownership is strongly correlated with income. Borenstein and Davis (2015), for example, shows using data from U.S. income tax returns, that the top income quintile has received 90% of all electric vehicle tax credits. But high-income drivers tend to drive more than other households (Bento et al. 2005; Levinson forthcoming), so if anything income differences tend to lead electric vehicles to be driven more.