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Impact of regional temperature on the adoption of electric vehicles: an empirical study based on 20 provinces in China

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Abstract

The development of electric vehicles (EVs) is not only a necessary path for China to move from a big country to a powerful country in automobile industry, but also a strategic measure to achieve the goal of “peak carbon dioxide emissions” and “carbon neutrality.” However, in the low and high temperature environment, EVs may face problems such as a large reduction in cruising range, slow charging and poor safety, which decrease the attractiveness of EVs to consumers and hinder the EV adoption. However, existing research rarely pays attention to the impact of temperature on the EV adoption. Based on the panel data of electric vehicle sales in 20 Chinese provinces from 2010 to 2018, this paper uses interaction fixed effect (FE) model to test the effect of temperature on the EV adoption and explains the causes of regional differences in EV adoption. The study has the following findings. Firstly, EV sales show an inverted U-shaped trend with the change of temperature. Secondly, compared to extreme high temperature, extreme low temperature has a greater negative impact on the EV adoption. Thirdly, the negative impact of extreme temperature on battery electric vehicles (BEVs) is greater than that of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs). Finally, temperature will make consumers’ behavior adaptive by affecting their expectations. These findings can provide policy makers, department of urban planning and building, EV technology and quality inspection department, non-governmental organizations, and EV manufacturer, aiming at accelerating the market proliferation of EVs, with theoretical basis and targeted insights.

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Data availability

The data used and obtained during the study will be available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Notes

  1. “Suitable temperature” refers to the temperature most suitable for electric vehicle operation, that is, under this temperature, electric vehicle can give full play to its best performance. The setting of appropriate temperature mainly refers to the following research (Reddy,2011; Fetene et al. 2017; Yuksel et al., 2015; Demircali et al. 2018).

  2. The results of the standard structural equation model can be seen in an online supporting information file.

Abbreviations

ADF:

Augmented Dickey-Fuller

AR:

Autoregressive

BEV:

Battery electric vehicle

EV:

Electric vehicle

FE:

Fixed effect

GDP:

Gross domestic product

GMM:

Generalized method of moments

IEA:

International Energy Agency

OECD:

Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development

OLS:

Ordinary least squares

PHEV:

Plug-in hybrid electric vehicle

RE:

Random effect

TFP:

Total factor productivity

UoM:

Unit of measurement

W:

Watt

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Acknowledgements

Comments from the editor and two anonymous reviewers are gratefully acknowledged.

Funding

This work is financially by National Social Science Foundation of China (No.21FJYB014) and Postgraduate Cultivating Innovation and Quality Improvement Action Plan of Henan University (No.SYLYC2022196).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Economics, Henan University, Kaifeng, Henan, 475004, People’s Republic of China

    Xiaomin Li & Dong Xue

  2. Academy of Hinterland Development, Henan University, Zhengzhou, Henan, 450046, People’s Republic of China

    Xiaolei Zhao

  3. School of Foreign Languages, Zhengzhou Shengda University, Zhengzhou, Henan, 451191, People’s Republic of China

    Qianqian Tian

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  1. Xiaomin Li
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  2. Xiaolei Zhao
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  3. Dong Xue
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Contributions

Xiaomin Li: Conceptualization; writing, original draft; writing, review and editing; supervision, project administration; funding acquisition. Xiaolei Zhao: Methodology; software; validation; formal analysis; investigation; data curation; writing, original draft; visualization. Dong Xue: Writing—review and editing. Qianqian Tian: Writing—review and editing. Xiaomin Li and Xiaolei Zhao contributed equally to this work as the first authors.

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Correspondence to Xiaomin Li.

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Li, X., Zhao, X., Xue, D. et al. Impact of regional temperature on the adoption of electric vehicles: an empirical study based on 20 provinces in China. Environ Sci Pollut Res 30, 11443–11457 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-22797-0

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