The Predicted Relationship Between Relating Factors on Electric Vehicles and Carbon Dioxide Emissions in the United States

Abstract

In recent years, vehicle electrification is promoted around the world to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. As electric vehicles (HEV, PHEV, BEV) are taking a bigger portion of the market share every year, it is important to find out whether this trend does provide environmental benefits in real life. Many previous studies have investigated the topic regarding electric vehicles and emissions: a lot of comparisons between the lifecycle emissions of electric vehicles and internal combustion engine vehicles are done by scholars around the world, most indicating that EVs produce less lifecycle emission than ICEVs. While most of these studies are done from a microscopic perspective by taking very detailed regional data, this study is trying to develop a prediction for the relationship between the sales of electric vehicles and carbon dioxide emissions from a broader perspective. The scope of this study is from 2000 to 2018 in the United States and the data is taken from the U.S. Energy Information Administration and Bureau of Transportation Statistics, U.S. Department of Transportation. A multiple linear regression model is developed where the independent variables include the sales number of EVs and variables related to the lifecycle of EVs: electricity production, petrol price, industrial sector energy consumption, transportation sector energy consumption and the sales of ICEVs; the dependent variable is carbon dioxide emission. After establishing a linear model for these variables in RStudio, a negatively proportional relationship between the sales number of EVs and carbon dioxide emission is discovered (coefficient = −1.769 × 10 −3 , p-value = 1.29 × 10 −5 ). Besides that, petrol price and transportation sector energy consumption are also factors that have a significant effect (at 𝛼 = 5%) on the dependent variable. Although the data for some variables might not be precise enough, the regression model proves that the rising sales of EVs correspond with the reduction of carbon dioxide emission.