Does digitalisation affect the adoption of electric vehicles? New regional-level evidence from Google Trends data

Abstract

ABSTRACT Digitalisation is an important dimension that contributes to fostering the adoption of electric mobility. We investigate this unexplored topic by focusing on the regional level of analysis, and presenting new data and evidence for a large number of regions in Europe, Canada and the United States. The empirical analysis makes use of Google Trends data. It constructs new indicators of digitalisation and the adoption of electric vehicles, as measured by Google search queries. The new dataset contains indicators for 182 regions in 15 countries for the period 2010–23. We use this dataset to carry out a time-series analysis (vector error correction (VEC) model) of the relations between digitalisation and electric vehicles in each region. The results show that digitalisation is an important factor that has fostered the adoption of electric vehicles in the last decade. The analysis, though, also points out that there is considerable heterogeneity in the time-series results among regions in our sample. Digitalisation has a more visible effect on electric mobility for regions that have higher gross domestic product per capita, better internet infrastructures, a young and well-educated workforce, and higher population density.