Identifying communities that are a priority for electric vehicle related investments

We develop a spatial tool to identify communities that should be priorities for electric vehicle related investments. We do this by clustering census tracts in California based on metrics to estimate need for plug-electric vehicles (PEVs), readiness to adopt PEVs, and current PEV adoption rates. The clustering identifies tracts we define as a first, second, third, or low priority for PEV-related investments. Current tools used to direct PEV investments were not designed to identify tracts for PEV investments. The approach we develop in this paper, which we only designed to consider PEVs, could be a better method to direct PEV investments. Our classifications generally align with State identified priority tracts. However, many communities not considered priorities for the State may be priorities for investments, and among communities considered State priorities some are not high priority.