a b s t r a c tAlternative fuel vehicles can play an important role in addressing the challenges of climate change, energy security, urban air pollution and the continued growth in demand for transportation services. The successful commercialization of alternative fuels for vehicles is contingent upon a number of factors, including vehicle cost and performance. Among fuel infrastructure issues, adequate refueling availability is one of the most fundamental to successful commercialization. A commonly cited source reports 164,300 refueling stations in operation nationwide. However, from the perspective of refueling availability, this nationwide count tends to overstate the number of stations required to support the widespread deployment of alternative fuel vehicles. In terms of spatial distribution, the existing gasoline station networks in many urban areas are more than sufficient. We characterize a sufficient level of urban coverage based upon a subset of cities served by relatively low-density station networks, and estimate that some 51,000 urban stations would be required to provide this sufficient level of coverage to all major urban areas, 33 percent less than our estimate of total urban stations. This improved characterization will be useful for engineering, economic and policy analyses.

A large-scale transition to alternative fuels and vehicles is challenging. New modeling approaches are necessary to supplement existing models, such as MARKAL. One promising approach is simulation gaming. Simulation gaming has been used extensively in many fields, most conspicuously in military applications, to provide insights into the dynamics of uncertain processes. A large-scale game to simulate transitions to alternative fuels and vehicles was developed to explore the potential of this approach. Preliminary results of the game play suggest a possible counterintuitive dynamic: high energy prices can discourage the wide-scale adoption of alternative fuel vehicles because increased fuel costs reduce consumers' ability to pay for more costly alternative vehicle technologies.

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