Chancellor's Leadership Professor

Policy Advisor & Sr. Research Economist

The Economics of Electric Vehicles

This survey paper is intended for a broad audience of economists and policymakers who aspire to become familiar with the private and public economics of EVs. We review and discuss the landscape of EV policies in the context of evidence from the recent literature.  Questions include: how big are the differences in EV emissions across space? Are there market failures in EV charging infrastructure? What does the time path of optimal subsidies look like?

Low Energy: Estimating Electric Vehicle Electricity Use​

Are EVs a good substitute for gasoline cars? One way to start to answer this question is to look at how people are driving their EVs, as measured by “electric vehicle miles traveled” (eVMT). Fiona Burlig, Jim Bushell, Catherine Wolfram and I provide the first at-scale estimate of EV home charging by matching 12 billion observations of hourly electricity usage with EV registration data. The average EV increases overall household load by 2.9 kilowatt-hours per day, less than half the amount assumed by state regulators. We then scale this up to account for away-from-home charging to estimate annual eVMT. Our results imply that plug-in hybrids travel 1,700 miles per year on electricity and battery electrics 6,700 miles per year, both far below miles traveled in gasoline cars.