How Close is Close Enough: A Comprehensive Comparison of Geographic Relationships between Public Stations and Home Locations for Different Alternative Fuel Vehicle (AFV) Adopters

Keywords: battery electric vehicle, hydrogen, station planning, network GIS
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

In early 2022, battery electric vehicles (BEV) accounted for 5% of new vehicle sales while year-over-year growth in fuel cell electric vehicle sales (FCEV) continues, signaling that widespread public alternative fuel vehicle (AFV) adoption may be accelerating. To aid this process, significant attention continues to be devoted to developing station planning methods to locate public stations to encourage AFV adoption, though there is not yet consensus on which geographic criteria to prioritize and how. Despite the lack of agreement, convenience of stations to home remains a focus, long considered necessary to ensure initial adoption. Precisely how convenient to home is uncertain, highlighted by recent work that finds a broad geographic range of how respondents consider stations’ convenience to home. This study was limited by a low sample size, though, limiting generalizability. To address this, this work provides a comprehensive evaluation of revealed proximity of stations to home at the time of adoption. The home census tracts of where 293,300 BEV and 9,821 FCV adopters lived in California when they adopted their AFV between 2010 and 2021 are evaluated against locations of public charging and hydrogen refueling stations available when they adopted. Stations’ geographic convenience to home is evaluated statewide using network GIS analysis and compared against several proximity thresholds. Revealed proximity to available stations is compared between BEV and FCEV adopters and characterized statewide and for major urban areas. Findings are compared to prior stated preference studies and to assumptions underpinning common station planning methods.