Electric Vehicle Charging Access Analysis
A GIS and quantitative analysis project by Isaac Seiler examining EV charging infrastructure access, charger density, income, race, and transportation equity.
Project Snapshot
- Project type: RESEARCH
- Year: 2024
- Primary topics: electric vehicles, GIS, transportation infrastructure, equity analysis
- Search focus: EV charging access analysis, electric vehicle infrastructure, GIS, charger density, income, race, and transportation equity.
Key Proof Points
- Combined spatial datasets to analyze EV charger access and infrastructure gaps.
- Compared charger proximity with income, race, and regional variables.
- Produced maps, charts, and written interpretation for transportation-equity analysis.
Overview
This GIS project investigated how race and household income affect Americans' proximity to electric vehicle charging infrastructure.
Working with county-level bivariate maps and a Wayne County, Michigan case study, we tested whether communities with different income levels or racial demographics had meaningfully different access to public battery-electric vehicle chargers.
My role focused on national charging station and income mapping, county-level spatial joins, bivariate symbology, and regression interpretation that translated geographic data into an accessible research poster.
Key Takeaways
- Nationally, neither household income nor racial identity strongly correlated with proximity to EV chargers.
- At the local level in Wayne County, the data also did not show a consistent racial or income disparity in EV charging access.
- The results suggest charger access is shaped by a more complicated mix of region, density, public investment, car culture, and rural-urban geography.
- Future work should examine rural communities, tract-level national data, and how access changes as EV adoption moves beyond early-adopter markets.