A fundemantal and unanswered question for the widely shared goal of electrifying passenger vehicles is how the price of electricity, which can vary greatly across countries and regions, affects buying behavior. I make use of a natural experiment in Norway in the period 2021-2022 when large price differences between north and south emerged to estimate the effect of electricity prices on the decision to purchase a pure battery-electric vehicle. Simple difference estimates along the border of the price zones as well as a difference-in-difference regression model suggest a significant but economically modest effect of a 2-4\% reduction in the probability of purchasing an electric vehicle in the high price zone. A counterfactual simulation suggests that there would have been about 3000 to 6000 fewer electric vehicles sold in the high-price south compared to a scenario where the south had equally low prices as in the north.

翻译：一个普遍且未得到解答的问题是：电力价格的变动对电动汽车购买行为的影响。本文利用了2021年至2022年挪威出现的南北巨大电价差异的自然实验，估算了电价对纯电动汽车购买决策的影响。沿着价格分界线的简单差异估计以及差分回归模型表明：高价格区购买电动汽车的概率显著降低了2-4%。虚拟模拟表明，如果南部地区的价格和北部一样低的话，高价格区售出的电动汽车将减少约3000至6000辆。