EV charging for multifamily housing: Review of evidence, methods, barriers, and opportunities

Abstract

For equitable electric vehicle adoption, the challenge posed by the dearth of home-charging infrastructure for multifamily housing residents has been widely acknowledged but infrequently studied. As research and practitioners began to focus on equity concerns in the 2010s, the non-peer-reviewed “grey” literature (consisting of reports from university centers, national labs, nongovernmental organizations, consultants, and government agencies) advanced faster and further than peer-reviewed articles. The major research gap in this field is the extremely small number of peer-reviewed papers focused entirely on electric vehicle charging for multifamily housing. As a result, this review also includes (a) studies of charging infrastructure that separately examine multifamily charging, and (b) studies of electric vehicle adoption that address how the lack of home charging hampers equitable adoption. This study reviews 103 documents in this emerging research area. Research often combines a variety of methods to study this problem, which this paper groups into spatial or geographic analysis; survey research; statistical modeling; qualitative research; policy, law, economic, engineering, and business research; and case studies, site visits, and pilot projects. Every study viewed multifamily housing and renting as posing substantial barriers including physical/technological (especially parking and electrical capacity); financial (especially the high cost); management; public acceptance/demand; and regulatory/legal issues. This research proposed the first classification system for the varied solutions proposed, including incentives and subsidies; technological; new business models; regulatory and legal; geographical (including curbside or streetlights); education and outreach; and substitution. With so few studies focused on this problem, many promising directions beckon to future researchers.