Diffusion model to analyse the performance of electric vehicle policies: An evolutionary game simulation

Previous studies on policy interventions prompting electric vehicle (EV) adoption have mainly involved fragmented analyses of multiple policies using system dynamics models and evolutionary games. This study integrates these two approaches to examine EV policies in mainland China and compares their impact on the interaction between governments, consumers, and manufacturers. The results indicate that the annual sales of EVs are most heavily impacted by license plate restrictions, followed by battery capacity. They are most sensitive to the dual-credit policy (DCP) and least affected by government research and development (R&D) subsidies; meanwhile, all four policies increase the sales of EVs. A substitution relationship exists between the dual-credit policy and the government’s R&D subsidies. A simulation analysis of the different scenarios confirmed the multiple impacts of several policy interventions on the increase in EV sales, which should be explicitly considered in EV policymaking.