The effectiveness and limits of time-of-use pricing in public EV charging networks

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Time-of-use pricing is widely used to manage demand at public EV charging stations, yet evidence on when it works and through which margin remains limited. Using station-by-day-by-hour data from Shenzhen and Amsterdam, we estimate intraday price responsiveness on two margins: whether charging occurs in a station hour and, conditional on charging, delivered energy and occupancy time. A high-dimensional fixed-effects design absorbs station-by-day demand shocks and hour-of-week patterns, so identification relies on within-station, within-day price variation under scheduled tariffs. We find strong context dependence in adjustment channels. Shenzhen adjusts mainly through conditional intensity and occupancy, whereas Amsterdam adjusts mainly through participation. Estimated price responsiveness differs by weather: it is weaker at higher temperatures in Shenzhen and stronger for participation during rainy hours in Amsterdam. Utilization diagnostics suggest higher charger power is consistently associated with higher throughput per charger, while very local densification is often offset by substitution in dense micro-markets.