Real-world battery electric vehicle charging and driving behavior estimation and quantification

Newer, longer-range electric vehicles (EVs) drive approximately 12,000 miles annually, approaching the 14,000-mile annual average for gas vehicles, highlighting the importance to understand better EV charging and driving behavior as EVs become mainstream. Using U.S. EV driving, parking, and charging data from 2018 to 2019 and 2023–2024, we analyzed how drivers use charging infrastructure and predicted charging likelihood. A random-forest model was used to screen for key factors, informing an interpretable mixed logit model with about 80 % out-of-sample accuracy. Drivers of longer-range EVs in 2023–2024 primarily charged at home, but plugged in roughly 25 % less often at home at the end of the day than drivers of shorter-range EVs when state of charge was 50 %. Charging was more likely (∼5–9 %) in the Northeast than in other regions, particularly in winter. Additionally, greater public charging availability may also be associated with an increase in the probability of away-from-home charging.