Do electric vehicle incentives matter? Evidence from the 50 U.S. states

Makena Coffman, Sherilyn Hayashida, Sumner La Croix, Energy Policy and Planning Group, Energy, News, Publications

UHERO congratulates Sherilyn Wee, Makena Coffman, and Sumner La Croix on the publication of, “Do electric vehicle incentives matter? Evidence from the 50 U.S. states,” in Research Policy. This research measures the effectiveness of state-level policies on the adoption of electric vehicles in the United States. Read more about this in The Role of Policy and Peers in EV Adoption.

Abstract:

We estimate the effectiveness of policy incentives for adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) in the 50 U.S. states. We employ a rich dataset of semi-annual state-level new EV vehicle registrations by make and model from 2010 to 2015 and state-level policy instruments that could affect new EV model registrations. We construct two measures of policy, one which aggregates policy instruments that can be assigned a value and a second that aggregates those without explicit values. Using a within model difference-in-difference estimator with high-dimensional fixed effects, we find that a $1000 increase in the value of a state’s model-specific EV policies increases registrations of that model within the state by 5–11%.