Project description

Accessibility to daily destinations for electric and internal combustion engine vehicles is not fundamentally different except for one important dimension. Anxiety range, the fear of running out of battery power before reaching a charging station, significantly affects the ease with which people can access different destinations and, therefore, their willingness to buy or drive an electric vehicle (EV). This project focuses on how people might evaluate the charging infrastructure within the areas where they drive most often, the set of places they drive to routinely like workplaces and stores. We will create travel zones based on the observed patterns of driving established under a system where gas-powered cars dominate to assess the ability of EVs with different ranges to reach the same destinations. We will then use these zones to analyze how different measures of charging station accessibility are associated with higher EV ownership and whether charging infrastructure buildup leads to faster EV adoption rates. Finally, we will focus on residents of multi-unit dwellings, who have a greater need for charging stations near their homes, by creating a fine-grained measure of accessibility based on road network distance.