Charging Station Subsidies and Electric Vehicle Adoption: Evidence from Sweden

Sammanfattning

The proportion of newly registered electric cars in Sweden grew from nearly zero percent in 2010 to just under two percent in 2018, with a particularly strong increase after 2015. In line with national and international climate targets, policy instruments should support a transition to a more sustainable transportation market. We study if the Klimatklivet (Climate Leap) policy affected the share of registered battery electric vehicles in Swedish municipalities between 2015 and 2018. We use a staggered Difference-in-Difference event study design in addition to a fixed effects method. Our first results, suggested a positive and statistically significant average treatment effect of Klimatklivet on the share of battery electric vehicle adoption of approximately 0.3 percentage points (100% increase), relative to the pre-treatment mean of 0.3%. However, when including municipality control variables, we find no statistically significant effect of Klimatklivet on electric vehicle adoption. The result suggests that the Klimatklivet subsidy program for charging infrastructure may not be sufficient on its own to drive battery electric vehicle adoption in Sweden.