Charging Electric Vehicle Sharing Fleet

ABSTRACT

Many cities worldwide are embracing electric vehicle (EV) sharing as a flexible and sustainable means of urban transit. However, it remains challenging for the operators to charge the fleet because of limited or costly access to charging facilities. We focus on answering the core question—how to charge the fleet to make EV sharing viable and profitable. Our work is motivated by the setback that struck San Diego, California, where car rental company car2go ceased its EV-sharing operations. We integrate charging infrastructure planning and vehicle repositioning operations that were often considered separately. More interestingly, our modeling emphasizes the operator-controlled charging operations and customers’ EV-picking behavior. With advanced operations research models, we find that the viability of EV sharing can be enhanced by concentrating limited charger resources at selected locations. Both the high-level planning guidelines and operational policies can be useful for practitioners.