Federal Vehicle Fleets: Observations on the Transition to Electric Vehicles

This report addresses: What is the composition, use, and location of federal fleets? What is the potential for federal fleets to transition to electric vehicles?

To address the first objective, GAO analyzed government-wide data on vehicles in federal agency fleets. We determined that these data were generally reliable for providing high-level depictions of federal fleets, such as describing their overall composition and location. However, they may not be detailed or consistent enough to provide accurate and reliable vehicle-level analyses, such as day-to-day use. To address the second objective, we analyzed GSA information on the vehicles agencies can purchase or lease …

How Affordable are Electric Vehicles?

Despite supply chain issues and limited inventories, the electric vehicle (EV) market in the U.S. is growing rapidly. Yet these vehicles are still considered inaccessible to many people due to their high upfront cost.

At a national level, sales of new light-duty plug-in electric vehicles, including battery electric and plug-in hybrids (hereinafter referred to as EVs), nearly doubled from more than 300,000 in 2020 to over 600,000 in 2021. In the first quarter of 2022, more than 81,000 EVs were sold in California alone, increasing the market share of EVs to an all-time high of 16.3%.…

How the U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard Could Use Garbage to Pay for Electric Vehicles

The U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) is a key federal program shifting the nation’s transportation fuel mix towards lower-carbon alternatives. A 2014 update to the standard included certain types of renewable electricity as qualifying fuels, supporting vehicle electrification within the RFS for the first time. This study investigates the potential under existing regulatory authority to expand deployment of low-carbon waste-to-electricity pathways, yielding revenue that could be used to subsidize electric vehicle (EV) sales or to support other RFS-aligned climate and transport-sector goals. We find that by accounting for drivetrain efficiency in credit allocation and creating a centralized entity to accrue …

More EVs, Fewer Emissions: How to Maximize Emissions Reductions by Smart Charging Electric Vehicles

RMI and WattTime found that when EVs are optimized with smart charging to align with times of low emissions on the electricity grid, they further reduce emissions by an additional 2–8 percent and even become a grid resource.

The report More EVs, Fewer Emissions finds two key factors that affect the amount of emissions saved from optimized EV smart charging: the local grid mix and charger speed.

Even on dirtier grids, optimized charging can still play a role in reducing emissions and their associated pollution. This report digs into the differences in six regions in the United States and offers …

The Global Diffusion of Electric Vehicles: Lessons from the First Decade

Electrifying the transportation sector is key to reaching the goal of carbon neutrality. This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the diffusion of passenger electric vehicles based on detailed data on model-level electrical vehicle sales across the world from 2013 to 2020. The analysis shows that the highly uneven electrical vehicle penetration across countries is partly driven by cross-country variation in incentives and especially in the availability of charging infrastructure. Investment in charging infrastructure would have been much more cost-effective than consumer purchase subsidies in promoting electrical vehicle adoption. This finding highlights the importance of expanding charging infrastructure in the …

Electrifying Ride-Hailing in the United States, Europe, and Canada: How to Enable Ride-Hailing Drivers to Switch to Electric Vehicles

Efforts to reduce transportation emissions through electrification can accelerate their impact by focusing on intensively used vehicles. Vehicles driven on ride-hailing platforms such as Uber and Lyft are intensively used, and their distinct charging patterns can support the development of essential electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure.

However, vehicles used for ride-hailing are often missed by actions to electrify other intensively used vehicles, and an array of disparately available financial incentives, EV models, and charging options produce a complicated landscape where it is often unclear whether an EV costs more or less than an internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle or is …

The Stakes for Workers in How Policymakers Manage the Coming Shift to All-Electric Vehicles

Rapid technological change, new market dynamics, and global action to mitigate climate change is driving a historic shift toward electric vehicles (EVs) in the automotive sector. Although hybrid electric vehicles have been part of the U.S. vehicle fleet for more than two decades, and some mass-market EVs have been available for over a decade, battery electric vehicles (BEVs), which are powered exclusively by a battery and an electric motor, currently make up a small part of U.S. auto sales. And the batteries and other drivetrain components in BEVs are largely made by non-U.S. suppliers. The coming shift toward BEVs is …

Retained Transportation Fuel Spending in the Southeast: Electric vs Internal Combustion Vehicles

“Retained Transportation Fuel Spending in the Southeast: Electric vs Internal Combustion Vehicles” developed by the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE) analyzes how much consumers spend on gas and diesel, how much of that transportation fuel spending remains in a given Southeast state, and how much leaves. The analysis then looked at what happens if all on-road gas and diesel-powered cars, trucks, and buses are replaced with vehicles that drive entirely on electricity. We found that electrifying transportation could provide an economic boon for Alabama, Georgia, Florida, North and South Carolina, and Tennessee and that currently $47 billion is currently …

Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Assessment: Analyzing Charging Needs to Support Zero-Emission Vehicles in 2030

This inaugural Assembly Bill (AB) 2127 Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Assessment examines charging needs to support California’s plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) in 2030. Under AB 2127, the California Energy Commission (CEC) is required to publish a biennial report on the charging needs of 5 million zero emission vehicles (ZEVs) by 2030. In September 2020, Governor Gavin Newsom issued Executive Order N-79-20, which directed the Commission to update this assessment to support expanded ZEV adoption targets.

In 2018, Executive Order B-48-18 set a goal of having 250,000 chargers (including 10,000 direct current fast chargers) by 2025. As of January 4, 2021, …

Climate Insights 2020: Electric Vehicles

According to some natural scientists and economists, one potential step to reduce emissions and mitigate climate change would be the widespread adoption of all-electric vehicles (EVs), which can be powered by electricity generated by sunlight, wind, and water. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency (see below), transportation emits more greenhouse gases than any other sector in the US, attributable to transportation’s near-complete dependence on fossil fuels. Thus, emissions can be dramatically reduced by widespread adoption of EVs. Perhaps partly for this reason, manufacturing and sales of EVs have been increasing in recent years. Still, thus far, such sales represent …