The study develops a computational framework to quantify the impact of electric vehicle (EV) adoption on access to essential services like supermarkets, schools, and parks during prolonged blackouts. The key findings are:
Existing geographic inequalities in access to services will be exacerbated by EVs, as households further from amenities will consume more of their battery reserves on each trip. This results in access-poor households being at higher risk of losing mobility during outages.
Urban areas with higher population density and lower car ownership rates are associated with lower access risk, as shorter travel distances and less reliance on personal vehicles mitigate the impacts of blackouts.
Increasing EV battery capacity can reduce access risk, but the effectiveness depends heavily on the geographic distribution of households and services within each city. Areas with more concentrated access-poor populations see greater benefits from battery improvements.
Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) technologies create a trade-off between using battery reserves for household amenities versus mobility, disproportionately benefiting access-rich households.
The results highlight how the mass adoption of EVs can exacerbate existing inequities in urban areas unless carefully incorporated into policy and planning decisions around transportation, land use, and disaster resilience.
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by Yamil Essus,... at arxiv.org 04-17-2024
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2404.09998.pdfDeeper Inquiries