Electric Vehicle Charging Behaviour and Price Elasticities of Charging: An Analysis Using Swiss Data
Abstract: In this paper I scrutinize charging behaviour of electric vehicles using data from a Swiss public charging station provider. I find a high prevalence of idle charging especially among alternative current (AC) stations, where mean idle charging amounts to 4h. The low annual amount of electricity charged per customer (on average 351 kWh in 2021) translates into only 1755 km driven. I compute charging tariff elasticities using panel data methods and information on around 1,700 public charging stations located all over Switzerland and around 140,000 charging events for the time period 2019 to February 2022. Controlling for a number of station attributes such as the plug type, the power of the plug, the number of customers per station as well as for location, year, month and day fixed effects, the findings reveal that a 10% increase in prices per kWh reduces electricity demand per event by at least 1%. The equivalent increase in tariffs per minute reduces the duration of charging by around 21.5%. Furthermore, customers seem to misperceive complex tariff structures since their reaction is up to four times higher with respect to average charging event expenditure per kWh compared to marginal prices.