Abstract

Electric rickshaws (ER) have proliferated in India over the last 5-10 years. These battery-run 3-wheelers are a pollution-free substitute for auto-rickshaws which have overtaken the last-mile connectivity market. However, these electric vehicles have limitations — they are slow, and their outer body is fragile, which makes it difficult for them to travel over bumps in the road. These limitations can lead to higher congestion on the road, especially during peak travel times and this may increase pollution through congestion externalities on other vehicles. To understand the aggregate effects of the adoption of ERs across the country, one needs to account for the selective adoption of ERs across cities and the selection of within-city routes on which ERs drive. To this end, the researcher builds a model of cross-city adoption of ERs and show that adoption rates of ER increase with population density, decrease with average speed, and decrease with average commuting distance in the city. I find support for these predictions in data on sales of ERs across cities in India. To estimate pollution and congestion elasticities of ER presence on the road, researchers in the project will use an incentivized experiment where they will vary the number of ERs on the road. This will be combined with a spatial model of ER adoption that determines the equilibrium flow of ERs (and other vehicles) on different routes in a city based on road characteristics and commuter demand. The estimates from this model will be combined with the cross-city model to determine aggregate welfare.