An Examination of the Impact That Electric Vehicle Incentives Have on Consumer Purchase Decisions Over Time

Status

Complete

Project Timeline

November 1, 2017 - October 31, 2018

Principal Investigator

Areas of Expertise

Zero-Emission Vehicles & Low-Carbon Fuels

Campus(es)

UC Davis

Project Summary

Incentives for plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) have been vital in growing the PEV market. These incentives cannot be applied at the same level to PEVs indefinitely, partly due to budgetary constraints. Changes in incentives could hinder PEV market growth in California. Therefore, incentives will need to be phased out in a way that maintains PEV sales. How to adapt the incentives when moving from an early adopter market to a mainstream consumer market is not well understood. This study will investigate existing survey data collected by the Plug-in Hybrid and Electric Vehicle (PHEV) Research Center from 2011-2017 and will obtain new data from the upcoming 2018 questionnaire survey to measure the current impact of incentives on different buyer populations, demographics, regions, usage patterns, and technologies as well as the changes of those impacts over the last seven years. This project will investigate how the California clean vehicle rebate project (CVRP), high occupancy vehicle (HOV) lane access for PEVs, and other local incentives such as free parking, and free charging could be reduced or phased out based on consumer acceptance of PEVs and the diminishing impact of the incentives on consumer purchase decisions. This analysis will be done through statistical analyses of how the importance of several incentive changes over time and their influence on consumer’s decision to purchase a PEV. The multivariate model will be able to capture the importance of the incentive by sociodemographic groups, census tracts, vehicle makes and models, and over time by leveraging variation amongst the variables and across the panel data. This analysis will identify which groups the incentives could be phased out first. The following research questions relating specifically to California will be addressed:
• Could incentives be unbundled so that buyers get either HOV lane access or a rebate, but not both, with the impact being incentives could be provided for longer?
• What is the potential impact of phasing out monetary incentives on the willingness to purchase a PEV?
• What is the impact of offering different incentives based on vehicle type or technology?
• Could incentives be phased out depending on sociodemographic attributes of car buyers with minimum impact on purchasing decisions?