To overcome adoption barriers and promote battery electric vehicles (BEVs) as an energy
efficient consumer transportation option, a number of states offer subsidies to consumers for
BEVs. We use a national data set of vehicle registrations and state-level financial incentives
to assess the impact of vehicle purchase subsidies on adoption using both difference-in-
differences and synthetic controls methods. We find that incentives offered as direct
purchase rebates generate increased levels of new BEV registrations at a rate of …