The impact of car‐sharing platforms' electric vehicle adoption level on firms, consumers, and carbon emissions

Abstract As car sharing emerges as a popular mode of transportation, the adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) by car‐sharing platforms may exert significant impacts on related firms, consumers, and the environment. To examine these effects, we develop a dynamic game model consisting of a car manufacturer (M), a retailer (R), and a car‐sharing platform (hereafter referred to as the platform) to investigate the impact of the platform's adoption of specialized EVs on supply chain members, consumers, and total carbon emissions (TCE). Analytical results show that the adoption level of EVs can affect M's channel choice when the service quality of the platform is high enough. Furthermore, when M selects dual channels, increasing the adoption level of EVs has a positive impact on R's profit, a negative impact on the profits of M and platform, and a nonmonotonic impact on the total profit of the supply chain; Moreover, as the adoption level of EVs increases, consumer surplus may decrease, the TCE of both fuel and electric vehicles may initially decrease and then increase, and the social welfare may initially increase and then decrease. Finally, if the production cost of EVs is high while the production cost of fuel vehicles is low, the platform should not adopt EVs. However, if the production costs of both types are high, the platform should adopt EVs.