An individual-level dataset of battery-electric, plug-in hybrid, and hybrid vehicle registrations, socioeconomic context, and charging infrastructure across urban and rural Tennessee

This dataset includes electric vehicle (EV) registrations and socioeconomic and spatial context of owners across Tennessee at the individual and census block-group level. It comprises three files. A block-group table describes 4,555 Tennessee census block groups with 32 variables; EV adoption rates per 1,000 residents and raw counts by drivetrain (battery electric [BEV], plug-in hybrid [PHEV], conventional hybrid [HEV], internal combustion [ICV]) and by Tesla versus non-Tesla status; socioeconomic and demographic attributes from the 2023 American Community Survey (ACS) 5-year estimates; mean Euclidean distance to the nearest public charging station; aggregate EV-owner vehicle values; and two derived analytical variables, a Principal Component Analysis (PCA)-based composite Socioeconomic Status (SES) score and a Local Indicators of Spatial Association (LISA) cluster assignment for EV adoption rate. A vehicle-records file contains 122,734 individual registrations (BEV n = 27,570; PHEV n = 8,179; HEV n = 86,985) active in Tennessee as of 2024, each record including drivetrain, make, model, model year, and manufacturer suggested retail price (MSRP), plus the registration's block-group Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) code, urban/rural class, and distance to the nearest charging station. A data dictionary documents each variable. To protect privacy, all owner names, addresses, vehicle identification numbers, and coordinates were removed after geocoding and block-group assignment; location is generalized to the block group. The data supports the work of urban–rural EV adoption differences and can be reused to examine the spatial characteristics of adoption, the relationship between socioeconomic status and vehicle electrification, and the role of charging-infrastructure proximity.