PEVs Market Penetration and Impact on Fuel Taxes

In this era of fossil fuels dependency and concern about Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions, the scientific community is putting great effort to curb and rationalize energy consumption. The transportation sector represents the biggest final use of oil in the U.S.. Of the almost 3 Gallons a day of oil consumed by each American, 50% goes to transporting people and goods from one place to another. Moreover, oil accounts for 43% of U.S. overall GHG emissions. Plug-in Electric Vehicles (PEVs) are nowadays seen as a concrete solution to reduce the oil consumed in the transportation sector in the 2030-2050 timeframe, since they are able to power a substantial portion of daily travels with electricity.These advance vehicles could allow displacing a large fraction of gasoline and diesel use. Technical, economical and environmental aspects related to these innovative vehicles are extensively studied by researcher throughout the world. In particular, this paper proposes a comparative analysis of the total PEV market penetration and sample numerical simulations are proposed for a case study. Strong emphasis has been given to study the impact of these vehicles on motor fuel taxes, a topic that has not been extensively investigated in the open literature. These taxes account not only for oil externalities, but are used to maintain the U.S. surface transportation structure. Consuming less gasoline per mile travelled will lead to reduced revenue collected from gasoline taxation, meaning that other mechanisms or funds that could augment the current means for funding and financing highway and transit infrastructure have to be found