Exploring the role of environmental regulations in the production and diffusion of electric vehicles

• The development of China’s EVs has entered a new phase in the current. • Effects of environmental regulations on EVs production and diffusion are revealed. • Modelling approaches that combine evolutionary game and epidemic model are designed. • Differentiated environmental regulation standards can accelerate EVs development. Recently, the governments worldwide are focusing on the role of environmental regulation policies for promoting the vigorous development of electric vehicles (EVs). To this end, it is particularly important to explore the potential effect of environmental regulation policies after its promulgation on the production and diffusion of EVs. In this paper, a novel modeling approach based on the evolutionary game model and epidemic model is developed and used to reveal the production and diffusion of EVs at different stages. The simulation results show that the strategies of vehicle enterprises and local governments will gradually approach (1,0) in the early infancy; and the maximum diffusion of EVs in the market will not be presented at this stage. Research results also illustrate that all equilibrium point are the saddle points in the development stage, but the degree of EVs diffusion in the market is likely to be small. With the implementation of stricter environmental regulations at the mature stage, the figures of equilibrium points gather to (1,1). However, EVs will be been diffused over large areas in the market by implementing the medium levels of environmental regulations at the mature stage. These findings will help the Chinese government in applying differentiated environmental regulation standards to promote the production and diffusion of EVs at different stages.