Do Electric Vehicles Need Subsidies? A Comparison of Ownership Costs for Conventional, Hybrid, and Electric Vehicles

Content Provider	Semantic Scholar
Author	Breetz, Hanna L. Salon, Deborah
Copyright Year	2018
Abstract	Battery electric vehicles (BEVs) are an important pathway for decarbonizing and reducing petroleum dependence in the transport sector. Although one barrier to adoption is the higher purchase price, advocates suggest that savings in fuel and maintenance can make BEVs economical over time. This paper presents a comparison of the five-year total cost of ownership for the most popular conventional, hybrid, and electric vehicles for 14 U.S. cities from 2011-2015. The findings identify spatial variation in costs due to differences in state subsidies, state and local fees, fuel prices, insurance and maintenance costs, depreciation rates, and vehicle miles traveled. Overall, the BEV’s higher purchase price and rapid depreciation outweighed its fuel savings in nearly all cities. Extensive sensitivity analyses highlight key parameters and assumptions. Under virtually all reasonable assumptions, federal and state incentives were critical for the electric vehicle to be cost competitive with the hybrid or conventional vehicles.
File Format	PDF HTM / HTML
Alternate Webpage(s)	https://energy.umich.edu/te3/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/09/Final-Breetz-Salon-EV-Ownership-Costs-v3-TE3-2.pdf
Language	English
Access Restriction	Open
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article