Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/318485 
Year of Publication: 
2025
Series/Report no.: 
Hamburg Contemporary Economic Discussions No. 81
Publisher: 
University of Hamburg, Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences, Chair for Economic Policy, Hamburg
Abstract: 
This is the first study to employ a national full sample dataset for a socioeconomic analysis of the adoption of electric vehicles (EVs). We use the most recent vehicle registration dataset from the Fed-eral Motor Transport Authority of Germany, which includes the entire underlying population of German vehicle owners. Combining web-scraped data covering all vehicles available in the German market with actual registration data allows a unique analysis of the individual decisions to purchase an EV. Our results suggest that financial incentives are the most relevant factor for EV adoption, with a €1,000 subsidy in-crease boosting EV choice probability by 1.2 percentage points. Given that EVs currently constitute 12% of newly registered private vehicles in Germany, our model calculates that, in the absence of subsidies, this share would be 1.2%. In contrast, a uniform maximum subsidy of €9,000 from 2011 to 2023 could have increased the adoption rate to 20%. These results underscore the importance of fin ancial incentives in achieving policy targets for EV adoption and suggest that purchase subsidies exhibit increasing marginal returns.
Subjects: 
Electric vehicles
Vehicle choice
Financial Incentives
Discrete choice
JEL: 
Q42
R41
H23
C35
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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