Household Preferences for Electric and Hybrid Cars
Abstract
Worldwide, the road transport sector accounts for a large share of CO2 emissions. Electric vehicles (EVs), have the potential to transform transportation, however their uptake continues to be very low. In this paper we employ a rich dataset including information on around 133,000 registered cars in the Swiss Canton of Bern, as well as a large number of household socio-demographic characteristics and information on car attributes to analyse household choice and switching behaviour towards hybrid and electric vehicles as well as their willingness to pay for environmentally friendly cars. Furthermore, we analyse the welfare effects of a number of counterfactuals. We consider the effect of a cap of 95 g of CO2 emissions per, the replacement of current registration taxes with a mileage dependent levy or the replacement of the current tax rebates for electric vehicles with upfront subsidies. An increased adoption of EVs poses challenges for securing the financing of the road infrastructure. Hence, we also simulate the effects of different scenarios on the revenue raised to finance the transport infrastructure. We also estimate the switching decision from gasoline or diesel driven to hybrid or electric cars. Thus, switching households have higher incomes, are smaller and are likely to own a solar panel and have a green electricity mix from their energy provider. The switching probability is on average 1.4% but even 4.5% for households with a PV. The switching probability is twice as large for households in the fourth compared to the first income quartile.
Date Issued
2020-11-06
Publication Type
Conference Item
Language(s)
en
Additional Credits
Title of Event
Access(Rights)
metadata.only