Environmental Policy Impacts: A Comparative Study Of Electric Vehicle Policies In The U.S. And China

This study examines how structural conditions shape electric-vehicle (EV) policy trajectories in the United States and China and how international EV firms can make defensible decisions under policy uncertainty. The analysis uses a comparative, mechanism-based framework that distinguishes between environmental conditions, including resource structure, demographics, spatial capacity constraints, local implementation readiness, and institutional structure, including policy and legal actions through which governments respond to uneven conditions. Sections 2 and 3 establish geopolitical and resource boundary conditions, including energy-security pressures, trade and industrial-policy tension, and differences in supply-chain position. Section 4 develops a demographic-capacity framework centered on affordability, settlement patterns, climate/terrain, infrastructure economics, and local implementation capacity to explain why EV adoption and charging rollout scale unevenly across regions. Section 5 applies a case-based institutional comparison to the United States and China, showing how differing governance structures generate different policy-action pathways under similar strategic pressures. The analysis finds that EV outcomes are increasingly shaped by the interaction of capacity constraints, legal/regulatory action, and trade-policy repricing of market access and supply chains, rather than by policy intent alone. Section 6 translates these findings into firm-facing recommendations organized around no-regrets actions and pathway-contingent pivots, emphasizing traceability, compliance-by-design sourcing, modular supply-chain planning, and signal-based adaptation. The study concludes that EV policy remains dynamic but structured: capacity conditions determine where transitions scale most readily; institutional actions determine how constraints are managed; and trade and industrial policy increasingly determine where production and market access can be sustained.

Author dc:creator

• Wang, Yuxiang

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Lindsey Austin Samahon

• Environmental Studies

Licence dc:rights.uri

• https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Repository record dc:identifier.uri

https://repository.upenn.edu/handle/20.500.14332/62602

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:repository.upenn.edu:20.500.14332/62602