Rural communities in Appalachia have struggled to transition to clean transportation.
But rural residents might stand to benefit more than their urban counterparts by switching to electric vehicles.
This idea is the basis for a project led by researchers at Tennessee Tech called “Rural Reimagined.” The central goal of the project is to speed vehicle electrification across most of Appalachia, including parts of Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia.
“This is the community we’re trying to take care of, to build a robust foundation of an electric vehicle ecosystem,” said Pingen Chen, a mechanical engineering professor at Tennessee Tech and principal investigator for the project, which includes 60 partners and received funding from the U.S. Department of Energy.
The project has two major components to achieve a rural EV ecosystem: community exposure and charging infrastructure, with plans to install about 200 chargers across the region.
AAA for electric vehicle drivers
To help people make informed choices on electric vehicles, the project team created what is essentially a library lending program for EVs. Any resident in the designated region can sign up to borrow an EV, such as a Chevy Bolt or Ford F-150 Lightning, for two to six weeks for free.
The newest addition to the project is an emergency EV charging service. If a rural resident or a driver traveling through rural areas runs out of charge, the university can deploy a mobile charging station directly to that person.
It’s basically “a AAA-like service” for EV drivers, Chen said.
Right now, the program is small, covering just a 40-mile radius around Tennessee Tech. But Chen says the goal is to eventually expand it across the Appalachian region. Chen and other researchers at the university also developed their own version of an affordable mobile charging station using old EV batteries.
“We don’t want to send them back to the recycling plant immediately, because it’s still very capable as an energy storage system,” Chen said.
Ultimately, Chen hopes the project as a whole can provide economically disadvantaged communities access to EVs and accurate information about affordability.
Rural drivers can potentially save money with EVs
The Appalachian region contains 180 counties designated as economically distressed or “at-risk,” according to the Appalachian Regional Commission’s 2025 report. Most of these counties are located within the five states in the EV program.
Rural drivers can save twice as much money as urban residents if they switch from gasoline-fueled cars to EVs, according to a data analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists, a science advocacy group.
Day to day, rural residents tend to drive more miles than urbanites. A 2011 study found that rural folks drive about 33-38% more than urban residents, and lower-income rural workers travel nearly 60% more annual miles than urban peers.
In the Tennessee Valley Authority’s service area, drivers switching to electric can save more than the average American driver. Regional electricity prices in recent years have ranged from about 11 to 13 cents per kilowatt hour, lower than the national average. (In Nashville, the electricity rate was about 11.3 cents on May 1, not including various monthly charges.)
For a vehicle with a 250-mile range, a full charge would cost about $7-$8 with recent rates, as a typical battery can hold about 60 kilowatt hours of charge.
Popular cars like the Toyota Camry sedan and Ford F-150 truck in their latest models, with standard ranges, would have cost about $36 or $63 to fill up the tank in Tennessee last week, based on the average gasoline price. For the Camry, the fraction of the tank to cover 250 miles would cost about $15. For the F-150, the cost would be $34 for 250 miles — or $30 for the hybrid version, or more for larger models.
Lower operational costs, plus lower annual maintenance costs, can help offset the upfront costs associated with choosing electric cars, which are typically at least a few thousand dollars more expensive than conventional alternatives, according to Chen. Tennessee drivers also face an upfront EV tax when first registering the vehicle. The fee is currently $200.
“Our main goal here is to help our rural community save money,” Chen said.
Federal tax credits for electric cars can also offset the upfront costs. The existing program from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act offers a tax credit of up to $7,500 for new EVs and up to $4,000 for many used EVs — though there have been recent efforts to scrap this program.
