Planning for Electric Vehicles

Mapping Electric Vehicles in the
Delaware Valley

To begin planning for Electric Vehicles (EVs), a community must know where the owners of EVs live, work, and charge. According to the International Center for Clean Transportation, the vast majority of EV charging in the U.S. currently occurs at the owner's home or workplace, and this trend is expected to continue as EV use increases. In order to support our planning partners, DVRPC has compiled vehicle registration, demographic, and employment data into an interactive webmap.

Knowing where PEVs are today is a useful starting point for planning for PEVs as they become more prevalent in the region. Municipalities and counties can use this data to inform decisions on permitting processes that may help future PEV owners install charging infrastructure in their homes more easily. They may also see certain areas that could benefit from PEV parking allowances or other mechanisms to ensure parking infrastructure for EV owners, such as requiring multi-family residences to include a certain number of PEV parking spaces with charging. Electric utilities can also use this information to inform where infrastructure upgrades may be needed. DVRPC compiled the vehicle registration data used in this map by summarizing raw vehicle data obtained from the relevant state agencies at several levels of geographic detail.

In addition to considering where vehicles are, effectively planning for EVs requires knowledge of the demographic and economic context of the area. For this purpose, DVRPC obtained estimates of population and housing units at the block group-level from the 2020 Decennial Census as well as employment figures from the LEHD Origin-Destination Employment Statistics version 8 (LODES8)

View Interactive Webmap

To learn more about EV charging infrastructure, feel free to visit the  Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission's (DVRPC) Alternative Fuel Vehicles webpage.

If you have any questions regarding these maps or wish to access the GIS datasets used in the analysis, please contact:
Sean Greene Manager, Office of Freight and Clean Transportation | sgreene@dvrpc.org | (215) 238-2860

Matthew Brahms
Transportation Planner, Office of Freight and Clean Transportation | mbrahms@dvrpc.org

Datasets Used in Analysis

• DVRPC Electric Vehicle Inventory compiled using:
  • 2023 vehicle registration data provided by the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation
  • 2023 vehicle registration data from the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission provided by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection
• 2020 Decennial Census Population Data at the block group-level
• LEHD Origin-Destination Employment Statistics (LODES), version 8 at the block group-level

Glossary of Terms

• AEV: All-Electric Vehicle. An alternate term for BEV.
• Census Block: The smallest geographic area for which the Census Bureau collects and tabulates decennial census data.
• Census Block Group: A combination of census blocks that is a subdivision of a census tract. The Block Group is the smallest geographic entity for which the decennial census tabulates and publishes the sample data (socioeconomic information).
• Charging Event: The act of plugging-in a PEV to charge the battery.
• EV: A generic term for a vehicle that gets some or all of its power from an electric motor. Sometimes used to mean PEV, BEV, or AEV (and occasionally HEV).
• GIS: Geographic Information System. A Geographic Information System is a system designed to capture, store, manipulate, analyze, manage, and present spatial or geographic data. GIS applications are tools that allow users to create interactive queries, analyze spatial information, edit data in maps, and present the results of all these operations. Esri's ArcGIS is a popular GIS software application.
• HEV: Hybrid Electric Vehicle. HEVs are vehicles that do not plug in, but have a large battery on board that is charged by the vehicle's braking. The energy stored by this battery assists the ICE in moving the car, significantly improving the gas mileage. Current examples include the Toyota Prius and Honda Accord Hybrid.
• ICE>: Internal Combustion Engine. Gasoline and diesel cars and trucks use an internal combustion engine to convert fuel to the motion that moves the vehicle. Propane or compressed natural gas are used in some ICE vehicles as well.
• kWh: Kilowatt-hour. A measure of electrical energy equivalent to a power consumption of 1,000 watts (about what a hand-held hair dryer uses) for 1 hour. It is the standard unit of measurement to describe PEV battery capacities and the amount of electricity transferred to the battery during charging.
• LEHD: Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics.
• LODES: Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) Origin-Destination Employment Statistics. LODES Data provides detailed spatial distributions of workers' employment and residential locations and the relation between the two at the Census Block level. LODES also provides characteristic detail on age, earnings, industry distributions, and local workforce indicators.
• MPO: Metropolitan Planning Organization.
• Municipality: A city, township, or borough.
• PHEV: Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle. PHEVs use both an ICE and an electric motor with a battery that recharges by plugging into an external source. Depending on its exact configuration, the PHEV's battery can either assist the ICE, or fully power the vehicle until the battery has been discharged, at which time the vehicle continues to operate as an HEV. A current example is the Toyota Prius Prime.
• PEV: Plug-in Electric Vehicle. An EV that plugs into an external source to charge an on-board battery that provides the electricity for the electric motor. Some EVs, such as trollies, subways, trains, and trolley buses, are powered by external electricity, from overhead wires or a track. Others are powered by fuel cells (FCEVs). These are not covered in this document, which addresses only PEVs.