Home charge timing choice behaviors of plug-in hybrid electric vehicle users under a dynamic electricity pricing scheme

This paper examines choice behaviors pertaining to the time at which users of plug-in hybrid electric vehicle with 24 km electric range charge their vehicles after arriving at home under a dynamic electricity pricing scheme. The following mutually exclusive alternatives are presented: no charging, charging immediately after arriving at home, charging at the cheapest time, and charging at other times. Four versions of a mixed logit model with unobserved heterogeneity are applied to panel data on vehicle usage from 9 households with 2226 observations in Toyota City. Estimation results suggest that users’ willingness to charge become stronger with increasing driving distance when the driving distance is less than the electric range of 24 km, while tend not to charge when the driving distance is longer than the electric range. Users who return home at the cheapest time or during the day are willing to charge immediately after arriving at home. Electricity prices significantly affect choices to charge at the cheapest time for all users, and stay-at-home mother users and users returning home in the evening tend to charge at the cheapest time. Users returning home in the evening also tend to charge at other times, and being accustomed to charge at a certain time increases the probability of charging at other times. In addition, considerable variations are found across individuals with respect to their preferences for charge timing alternatives as well as for electricity prices.