Many communities have been marginalised in the ongoing policy and planning debates surrounding transportation electrification, even though well allocated charging infrastructure is essential for the environmental and societal benefits of Electric Vehicles (EVs) to be realised. This scoping review aims to synthesise the current state of knowledge and gaps surrounding transportation equity in EV charging research. Following PRISMA-Scr protocols, a literature search is conducted to locate articles that explicitly or implicitly discuss EV charging equity. Our review finds that research on charging equity is nascent and lacking in clear normative evaluations of equity compared to the wider body of transportation equity literature. Only slightly more than one-in-four of an identified 37 articles discuss equity and justice explicitly. Equity perspectives in charging research are dominated by North American and European perspectives, with limited perspectives from the rest of the world. Charging incentivisation schemes and planning efforts may not be equity focused and may favour wealthier individuals, and there are differences in the charging needs and desires of high adoption groups compared to low adoption groups. These findings, however, often come from geographically and philosophically limited contexts and there are gaps in the literature for new methodological and topical contributions to this area.

Worldwide the adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) is recognized as a key strategy for reducing transport-related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, a major contributor to global warming and climate change. The objective of this pilot study is to examine the key variables that might have influenced electric vehicle (EV) purchase decisions among current EV owners and how they are aligned or different for the prospective EV owners in North Carolina (NC). By adopting a web-based survey for data collection, the study specifically aims to identify economic, demographic, environmental, and commuting behaviors, along with existing government policies and incentives that might motivate consumer choices regarding EV adoption. Most existing EV owners who participated in the survey identified themselves as college-educated White men with USD 100 K or higher income, have more than two cars, commute more than 30 min, and live in single-family homes with EV charging. In contrast, among non-EV owners who plan to adopt an EV within the next three years, a significant proportion are non-White, women, and earn USD 50,000 or less annually. While home charging is important to both current EV owners and non-EV owners, EV incentive policies and proximity to public changing stations are found to be more important to non-EV owners’ decision to adopt EVs. A reasonable conclusion from this research is that expanding EV-friendly policies, incentives, and infrastructure will encourage first-time EV ownership in NC while providing deeper insights into the dynamics of sociodemographic among both EV owners and non-EV owners.