Abstract
Transitioning from internal combustion vehicles (ICEs) to battery electric vehicles (BEVs) is widely considered essential to achieve climate goals. Although BEV adoption is rising, it varies substantially across regions and remains low in many countries despite significant investment from automakers and governments. Prior research has emphasized behavioral impediments to adoption, like range anxiety, and explored infrastructure design to support BEVs, often relying on surveys or niche settings like car sharing. However, little is known about how BEVs are used in everyday life, how their usage compares to ICEs, and how charging infrastructure shapes these patterns. Using a large dataset of U.S. vehicles, we demonstrate that BEVs are driven as much overall as ICEs but make about three fewer long-distance trips (>150 km) per year. We find that increasing charging density to a moderate level reduces this long-distance trip gap more effectively than increasing charging reliability. We further show that convenient home-charging, rather than range anxiety, better explains differences between BEV recharging and ICE refueling. Our results can help automakers design more attractive service offerings for BEV buyers, guide infrastructure providers and governments to improve charging access, and offer empirical evidence to inform public understanding and academic research on real-world BEV usage.
About the Speaker
Christian Kaps is an Assistant Professor of business administration in the Technology and Operations Management (TOM) Unit at Harvard Business School. Kaps' research focuses on emerging topics in renewable electricity generation and storage - notably how new technologies, sustainability behavior, and policies shape the energy market of the future. He teaches the first-year TOM course in the required curriculum.
His primary research interest is in the energy transition with a particular focus on how the evolution of storage technologies shapes capacity and investment decisions in renewable power and fossil-fuel plants. Additionally, he focuses on the role that customers' sustainable behavior plays in accelerating the adoption of new technologies and how local differences influence the setup of power markets around the world. While his main research focus is on the energy field, Kaps' interests lie in the areas of sustainability and technology innovation more broadly. As he believes that no single actor can solve climate change related challenges alone, he has partnered with firms ranging from storage startups to large renewable investors like AWS for his academic work.
Professor Kaps earned his PhD in Operations Management at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. He also holds a MSc in Supply Chain Management from the Rotterdam School of Management and received his BSc in Business Administration at WHU - Otto Beisheim School of Management.
