Electric Vehicle Rebate Adoption in New York State

Electrical Vehicle Rebate Adoption in New York State

This dataset explores the electric vehicle (EV) rebates distributed through New York’s Drive Clean Rebate Program. It includes information on EV type, rebate amount, transaction type, emissions and petroleum reductions, and county of purchase. The data was provided by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA).

Source:
New York State Energy Research and Development Authority. https://www.nyserda.ny.gov

Load required packages

library(readr)
library(dplyr)

Attaching package: 'dplyr'

The following objects are masked from 'package:stats':

    filter, lag

The following objects are masked from 'package:base':

    intersect, setdiff, setequal, union

library(ggplot2)

Load the dataset

ev_data <- read_csv("C:/Users/MCuser/Documents/DATA110/Electric_Vehicle_Drive_Clean_Rebate_2017NYSERDA.csv")

Rows: 150328 Columns: 11
── Column specification ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Delimiter: ","
chr (7): Data through Date, Submitted Date, Make, Model, County, EV Type, Tr...
dbl (4): ZIP, Annual GHG Emissions Reductions (MT CO2e), Annual Petroleum Re...

ℹ Use `spec()` to retrieve the full column specification for this data.
ℹ Specify the column types or set `show_col_types = FALSE` to quiet this message.

Clean data by removing rows with missing county or transaction type

ev_clean <- ev_data %>%
  filter(!is.na(County), !is.na(`Transaction Type`))

Summarize average rebate by EV type and transaction type

rebate_summary <- ev_clean %>%
  group_by(`EV Type`, `Transaction Type`) %>%
  summarise(
    avg_rebate = mean(`Rebate Amount (USD)`, na.rm = TRUE)
  )

`summarise()` has grouped output by 'EV Type'. You can override using the
`.groups` argument.

Show the summary

rebate_summary

# A tibble: 4 × 3
# Groups:   EV Type [2]
  `EV Type` `Transaction Type` avg_rebate
  <chr>     <chr>                   <dbl>
1 BEV       Lease                   1109.
2 BEV       Purchase                1014.
3 PHEV      Lease                    816.
4 PHEV      Purchase                 946.

Create bar plot with custom colors and formatting

ggplot(rebate_summary, aes(x = `EV Type`, y = avg_rebate, fill = `Transaction Type`)) +
  geom_bar(stat = "identity", position = "dodge") +
  scale_fill_manual(values = c("Lease" = "#FF69B4", "Purchase" = "#1E90FF")) +  # Pink and Blue
  labs(
    title = "Average Rebate Amount by EV Type and Transaction Type",
    x = "EV Type",
    y = "Average Rebate Amount (USD)",
    fill = "Transaction Type",
    caption = "Source: New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA)"
  ) +
  theme_minimal()

Reflection Essay

I cleaned the dataset by removing entries with missing counties or transaction types to ensure accurate aggregation and plotting. I grouped the data by EV type and transaction type to calculate the average rebate amount.

The resulting bar graph shows that Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs) generally receive higher rebate amounts than Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs). Leasing BEVs yields the highest average rebate, indicating the state’s strategy to encourage full EV adoption through accessible options.

If more time were available, I would have explored patterns in rebate distribution across counties or over time, and visualized emissions reductions geographically.

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