Comparison of Electric Vehicles Adoption in United States and China

Keywords: Electric Vehicles, Adoption, United States, China
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

In recent years, there has been increasing interest in revolutionizing transportation systems in hopes of bringing about widespread beneficial change. New transportation technologies, services, and behaviors over the past twenty years include bike sharing, car sharing and other emerging forms of shared mobility, electric vehicles (EVs), and autonomous vehicles (AVs). The United States and China, as two important economies, have the greatest number of adopters and users of these new forms of transportation to date, and are the home of both production of these technologies and of policy creation related to them. An analysis of the spatial diffusion of the EV technology, and how this pattern compares spatially between them, has only seen limited attention. This comprehensive research proposes to compare public interest in EVs between cities in the United States and China. Specifically, this research will focus on the geographic distribution of demand or interest in EVs and using several spatial analytical techniques, characterize this demand within a major city in each country and compare between them. A web-based survey distributed to 500 respondents each in San Francisco Bay area, USA and Shanghai, China, collected information about interest in EVs of various types and models, along with the approximate locations of where they live and travel, demographic characteristics, familiarity with EVs, and EV policy awareness. Additional content analysis explores responses to open-ended questions about knowledge, perception, barriers, and interest in these technologies.