Giving everyone a driveway won't make them buy an Electric Vehicle—but being rich will.
April 15, 2026
Original Paper
The causal relation between off-street parking and electric vehicle adoption in Scotland
arXiv · 2604.09271
The Takeaway
Many governments assume that the lack of a driveway (off-street parking) is the main thing stopping people from buying EVs. This study in Scotland found that while parking helps, it’s mostly just a catalyst for people who are already wealthy. The real gatekeeper isn't the infrastructure; it's the household income. Standard policy models have been overstating the impact of driveways because they ignored the fact that people with driveways are also the ones with the most money. It means we’re building 'charging deserts' that infrastructure alone can’t fix without addressing the wealth gap.
From the abstract
The transition to electric mobility hinges on maximising aggregate adoption while also facilitating equitable access. This study examines whether the 'charging divide' between households with and without off-street parking reflects a genuine infrastructure constraint or a by-product of socio-economic disparity. Moving beyond conventional predictive models, we apply a probabilistic causal framework to a nationally representative dataset of Scottish households, enabling estimation of policy interv