After the Road Repair and Accountability Actof 2017 (Senate Bill 1) was passed, transportation revenue funding in California was bolstered by numerous fees including gasoline and diesel taxes, as well as an annual registration fee exclusively for zero-emission vehicles(ZEVs). We assess theability of the ZEV registration fee to provide adequate funding in the future, how the registration fees affect the sales of ZEVs in California, and alternative funding mechanisms instead of the registration fee. We find that the registration fee is not a sustainable mechanism to provide adequate funding as California transitions towards ZEVs. Additionally, the fee detracts from the market adoption of ZEV technologies by as much as a 20% decrease in new ZEV sales. Lastly, we examine alternative funding mechanismsinclude a fuel tax for hydrogen and electricity, as well as a road user charge (RUC). We find that a ZEV exclusive RUC is the mostpromising alternative to the ZEV registration fee.

California has many aggressive climate policies, primarily aimed at individual sectors. This study explores untapped policy opportunities for interactions between sectors, specifically between the transportation and the electricity grid. As electric vehicles become more prevalent, their impact on the electricity grid is directly related to the aggregate patterns of vehicle charging. Even without vehicle-to-grid services, shifting of charging patterns can be a potentially important resource to alleviate issues such as renewable intermittency. This study compares, through modeling, projected emissions reductions from managed vs. unmanaged charging. The lion’s share of emissions reduction in the light-duty transportation sector in California will come from electrification, with a cumulative 1 billion tons of CO2 reduction through 2045. Decarbonization of the current grid leads to an additional savings of 125 million tons of CO2 over the same time-period. Potential state policies to exploit synergies between transportation electrification and grid decarbonization could reduce cumulative emissions by another 10 million tons of CO2. These policies include strategic deployment of charging infrastructure, pricing mechanisms, standardizing grid interaction protocols, and supporting grid infrastructure requirements.

While micromobility services (e.g., bikeshare, e-bike share, e-scooter share) hold great potential for providing clean travel, estimating the effects of those services on vehicle miles traveled and reducing greenhouse gases is challenging. To address some of the challenges, this study examined survey, micromobility, and transit data collected from 2017 to 2021 in approximately 20 U.S. cities. Micromobility fleet utilization ranged widely from 0.7 to 12 trips per vehicle per day, and the average trip distance was 0.8 to 3.6 miles. The median (range) rates at which micromobility trips substituted for other modes were 41% (16–71%) for car trips, 36% (5–48%) for walking, and 8% (2–35%) for transit, 5% (2–42%) for no trip. In most cities, the mean actual trip distance was approximately 1.5 to 2 times longer than the mean distance of a line connecting origin to destination. There was a weak and unclear connection between micromobility use and transit use that requires further study to more clearly delineate, but micromobility use had a stronger positive relationship to nearby rail use than to nearby bus use in cities with rail and bus service. The COVID-19 pandemic led to more moderate declines in docked than in dockless bike-share systems. Metrics that would enable better assessment of the impacts of micromobility are vehicle miles traveled and emissions of micromobility fleets and their service vehicles, and miles and percentage of micromobility trips that connect to transit or substitute for car trips.

The public sector and the private sector, which includes automakers and charging network companies, are increasingly investing in building charging infrastructure to encourage the adoption and use of plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) and to ensure that current facilities are not congested. However, building infrastructure is costly and, as with road congestion, when there is significant uptake of PEVs, we may not be able to “build out of congestion.” We modelled the choice of charging location that more than 3000 PEV drivers make when given the options of home, work, and public locations. Our study focused on understanding the importance of factors driving demand such as: the cost of charging, driver characteristics, access to charging infrastructure, and vehicle characteristics. We found that differences in the cost of charging play an important role in the demand for charging location. PEV drivers tend to substitute workplace charging for home charging when they pay a higher electricity rate at home, more so when the former is free. Additionally, socio-demographic factors like dwelling type and gender, as well as vehicle technology factors like electric range, influence the choice of charging location.