Accelerate Plug-in Electric Vehicles Adoption via Understanding Household Adoption Decisions and Designing Sustainable Transportation Finance Policies

Details

• Creators:
  Ji, Jean Yunying
• Corporate Creators:
  University of California, Davis
• Corporate Contributors:
  United States. Department of Transportation. University Transportation Centers (UTC) Program ; National Center for Sustainable Transportation (NCST)
• Subject/TRT Terms:
  • Automobile ownership
  • Decision making
  • Electric vehicles
• Resource Type:
  Thesis
• Geographical Coverage:
  United States
• Corporate Publisher:
  University of California, Davis
• Abstract:
  The transportation sector has been a dominant contributor to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the United States, contributing to 27% of GHG emissions in 2020 (EPA, 2022). In the last decade, vehicle electrification has rapidly taken place, especially in California. By the end of 2023, zero-emissions vehicles (ZEVs) consisted of 24% of all new car sales and accounted for around 5% of the total light-duty vehicles (LDVs) in the state (CEC, 2024). While vehicle electrification is an important strategy for reducing GHG emissions in the transportation sector, this fuel transition has implications for transportation infrastructure funding, which has traditionally been funded by motor fuel taxes. The transition from internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEVs) to ZEVs also invites research questions around the substitutions between these two technologies, especially at the household level. To explore these implications, this dissertation sets out to 1) explore the feasibility of implementing a per-mile road-usage charge (RUC) in replacement of the motor fuel taxes, 2) estimate the changes in vehicles-miles travelled (VMT) and the revenues generated from motor fuel taxes under the backdrop of vehicle electrification, and 3) quantify the effects of vehicle class and fuel type portfolios in ZEV-adopting households' vehicle replacement decisions. In the first project, the feasibility of integrating RUC programs and tolling was explored to identify potential opportunities to reduce operating and administrative costs. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with experts from tolling programs across the U.S. to identify areas of overlap between tolling and RUC. The interview findings are leveraged to inform the criteria of a multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) to evaluate how well the state-level RUC pilots and programs can integrate with tolling systems. The results demonstrate that there are numerous mutual benefits of a RUC-tolling integration. Both the tolling industry and RUC implementations can benefit from the increased scale of operations and the spur of technical innovations, which would reduce administrative costs. RUC programs can also learn from the tolling industry on addressing data privacy and security issues. Lastly, an area that is highly relevant in the rate design of RUC is ensuring equity by alleviating financial burdens on low-income populations and ensuring that unbanked and underbanked populations have access to the system.
• Format:
  PDF
• Download URL:
  https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/93271/dot_93271_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 1.06 MB]
• Collection(s):
  University Transportation Centers
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:9dc2747a3743eaf423f9f38b0a4cd066f02249860e94520953d859c8eb58887ca25c1505eb3cf6a7b36056e278a6e0aecbf20bc08ada2c1e5dc5b1a766beae90