International Electric Vehicle Policies

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between legal policy and the Electric Vehicle market in countries from around the world. As climate change has become an increasingly more important issue in modern society, heavy emphasis has been placed on environmentally conscious alternatives to many things used in daily life. Transportation, one of the largest and most polluting sectors of the economy, has seen many advances towards an eco-friendly future. Electric Vehicles, or EVs, have been lauded as the answer to heavily-polluting Internal Combustion Engines (ICE) by governments around the world. They have dumped large amounts of money in the form of tax breaks and subsidies into the EV sector, but it is unclear if that is really having an effect on the market. This study finds no correlation between the amount of money a government is offering to subsidize the purchase of EVs and the EV market share of the country. While EV law structure varies heavily between countries, the general contribution to the sector by governments is largely the same around the world.