A Quantitative Analysis of Policy Levers for Driving Electric Vehicle Adoption in Washington State

Abstract

This paper identifies key drivers of Electric Vehicle adoption to determine policy levers that promote Electric Vehicle purchase and to evaluate the ethical implications of current and future Electric Vehicle policy. The paper’s conclusions are drawn from a regression analysis performed at the ZIP code level, which concludes that the most significant drivers are a population’s commute time, median income, educational attainment, rental stock, and median age. These characteristics are valuable for determining where EV policy would be most effective, but only commute time and median income are identified as viable policy levers.