Modeling the Demand for Electric Vehicles and the Supply of Charging Stations in the United States: Working Paper 2023-06

By David Austin.

This paper presents a simulation model of the markets for light-duty electric vehicles (EVs) and the associated public charging infrastructure, as well as the network interactions between them. It illustrates the model’s attributes by simulating the effects of federal subsidies for public electric vehicle chargers and of an extension of tax credits for electric vehicles. I project that by the early 2030s the charger subsidies, which were signed into law in 2021 as part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, will have increased the size of the charger network enough to meet the demand for charging through the middle of that decade. That includes the additional demand that the expansion itself will induce: I project that through 2030, sales of EVs will rise more than 20 percent more rapidly with the expanded charger network than they would have otherwise. Including the additional effect of the EV tax credits that were signed into law as part of the 2022 reconciliation act, as well as past growth in EV sales, I project that EVs will constitute between 27 percent and 60 percent of new light-duty vehicle sales by 2032, compared with about 6.5 percent in 2022. After the subsidy funding from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act has been spent and the available EV tax credits claimed, EV charger networks and the EV fleet will remain somewhat larger than they would have been in the absence of those policies.