How Much Are Electric Vehicles Driven? Depends on the EV

Abstract

We use the 2017 National Household Travel Survey to investigate whether all-electric vehicles (EVs) are driven less than their counterfactual alternative in the US as hypothesized by Davis (2019). We find that selection effects reduce to a small degree the driving differential between EVs and gasoline or diesel powered vehicles. The dominant factor affecting annual miles driven is battery range. Once one limits the analysis to EVs with a range of 100 miles or more, the differences between EVs and internal combustion engine vehicles disappear. Given the rapidly increasing range of new EVs, we conclude that any difference in annual driving between EVs and other vehicles will be insignificant going forward. This has important implications for policy modeling including such policies as a revenue neutral VMT-Gas Tax swap. Doshi and Metcalf gratefully acknowledge funding for this project from a Sloan Foundation Grant to the Fletcher School Center for International Environmental and Resource Policy. They thank Lucas Davis and Dave Rapson for early converations that motivated this research.