Private Versus Shared, Automated Electric Vehicles for U.S. Personal Mobility: Energy Use, Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Grid Integration and Cost Impacts

Transportation is the fastest-growing source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and energy consumption globally. While the convergence of shared mobility, vehicle automation, and electrification has the potential to drastically reduce transportation impacts, it requires careful integration with rapidly-evolving electricity systems. Here we examine these interactions using a U.S.-wide simulation framework encom- passing private electric vehicles (EVs), shared automated EVs (SAEVs), charging infrastructure, controlled EV charging, and a grid economic dispatch model to simulate personal mobility exclusively using EVs. We find that an SAEV fleet 9% the size of today’s active vehicles can satisfy trip demand with only 2.6 million chargers (0.2 per EV). Controlled EV charging can also reduce electricity demand variability, significantly lowering GHG emissions and decreasing solar curtailment by about one- third. While private EVs with uncontrolled charging would reduce GHG emissions by 53% compared to gasoline vehicles, SAEVs could achieve a 70% reduction.

Keywords: electric vehicles, shared vehicles, automated vehicles, Smart charging, personal transportation, electricity grid

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Sheppard, Colin J. R. and Jenn, Alan T. and Greenblatt, Jeffery Buyers and Bauer, Gordon S. and Gerke, Brian F., Private Versus Shared, Automated Electric Vehicles for U.S. Personal Mobility: Energy Use, Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Grid Integration and Cost Impacts. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3575130 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3575130

This version of the paper has not been formally peer reviewed.