The relationship between public charging infrastructure deployment and other socio-economic factors and electric vehicle adoption in France

Abstract

Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs) and Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs) offer a promising choice to replace fossil-fuel dependent Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles (ICEVs) with a low-emission transport solution. Governments, automotive manufacturers, and charging infrastructure operators have deployed market-boosting initiatives to incentivize purchase. Yet, their market diffusion is limited by several barriers. To shed light on the main barriers, and based on an extensive state-of-the-art, we used an original database and statistically analyzed the relationship of 21 socio-demographic, technical, and economic factors on BEV and PHEV market shares, separately, in 94 French departments from 2015 to 2019, using mixed-effect regression. We find different covariates related to BEV and PHEV sales, respectively, suggesting the two markets respond to different incentives. The number of available BEV/PHEV models and energy prices are positively correlated with BEV and PHEV adoption. Fast, ultrafast charger density and local incentives positively relate with BEV sales, while slow-and-normal charger density to PHEV sales. Contrarily, national subsidies, relative to vehicles’ prices, are negatively correlated with PHEVs sales and is open for further studies. Based on the results, policy recommendations are considered for the automotive industry, charging operators, and local authorities to draw a roadmap for electric mobility transition in France.