China’s electric car frustrations

By 2020, the vehicle population in China will likely exceed 280 million—exacerbating national energy security, urban air pollution, and traffic congestion. In response, many local and regional governments in China are pursuing an expanding array of measures to restrain growth in personal vehicle ownership and, along with the central government, reducing emissions and energy use of vehicles. One prominent strategy is the promotion of new energy vehicles, especially plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs). Large subsidies were offered—up to $27,600 (171,000 RMB) per vehicle in some regions, including almost $9200 (57,000 RMB) from the central government—which suggests that China is making a major commitment to PEVs. But sales have been meager. In 2013, only 17,600 PEVs, mostly buses and utility trucks, were sold, less than 0.1% of total civilian vehicle sales. Several factors explain the failure of PEV sales to take off: (1) protectionism by local governments; (2) uncertainty over which electric-drive vehicle technologies to promote and what consumers are willing to pay, (3) lagging investments in charging infrastructure, and (4) conservative investment behavior by automakers and battery manufacturers. The central government issued directives to local governments in late 2013 to reduce barriers to out-of-town companies, resulting in modest sales increases in early 2014, but a more coherent, broader, and effective set of policies, incentives, and strategies are needed to overcome consumer and industry resistance and the lack of charging infrastructure.     

Optimizing charging station locations for urban taxi providers

Recently, electric vehicles are gaining importance which helps to reduce dependency on oil, increases energy efficiency of transportation, reduces carbon emissions and noise, and avoids tail pipe emissions. Because of short daily driving distances, high mileage, and intermediate waiting time, fossil-fuelled taxi vehicles are ideal candidates for being replaced by battery electric vehicles (BEVs). Moreover, taxi BEVs would increase visibility of electric mobility and therefore encourage others to purchase an electric vehicle. Prior to replacing conventional taxis with BEVs, a suitable charging infrastructure has to be established. This infrastructure consists of a sufficiently dense network of charging stations taking into account the lower driving ranges of BEVs.In this case study we propose a decision support system for placing charging stations in order to satisfy the charging demand of electric taxi vehicles. Operational taxi data from about 800 vehicles is used to identify and estimate the charging demand for electric taxis based on frequent origins and destinations of trips. Next, a variant of the maximal covering location problem is formulated and solved to satisfy as much charging demand as possible with a limited number of charging stations. Already existing fast charging locations are considered in the optimization problem. In this work, we focus on finding regions in which charging stations should be placed rather than exact locations. The exact location within an area is identified in a post-optimization phase (e.g., by authorities), where environmental conditions are considered, e.g., the capacity of the power network, availability of space, and legal issues.Our approach is implemented in the city of Vienna, Austria, in the course of an applied research project that has been conducted in 2014. Local authorities, power network operators, representatives of taxi driver guilds as well as a radio taxi provider participated in the project and identified exact locations for charging stations based on our decision support system.     

Statistical assessment of EV usage potential from user’s perspective considering rapid-charging technology

The aim of the German Government is the licensing of one million electric vehicles (EV) in Germany until 2020. However, the number of battery electric vehicles (EVs) today still is just above 25,000. There are several reasons for deciding against an EV, but especially low battery ranges as well as too long perceived charging duration inhibit the usage of an EV. To eliminate the negative influence of these two reasons on the decision to purchase an EV, a novel charging technology is established. The rapid-charging technology enables the user to recharge the battery to 80% of its state of charge (SOC) within 20–30 min. For the examination of the technology’s impact from (potential) user’s perspective, users and nonusers of battery electric vehicles were questioned about the perceived additional value of public rapid-charging infrastructure by taking into account different trip purposes and running comparisons to regular charging options. The results show an increased perceived value especially for trips with leisure purpose, considering their share of all trip purposes in Germany, according to the MiD 2008. In order to increase the number of licensed EVs in Germany, the study’s results also suggest further dissemination of information on rapid charging which might influence the perceived usefulness of the technology and consequentially the perceived usefulness of an EV.     

Modelling market diffusion of electric vehicles with real world driving data – German market and policy options

Plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) have the potential to reduce green house gas emissions from the transport sector. However, the limited electric range of PEVs could impede their market introduction. Still some potential users are willing to pay more for PEVs. The combined effect of these and other influencing factors as well as the resulting future market evolution are unclear. Here, we study the market evolution of PEVs in Germany until 2020. Our results reveal a great deal of uncertainty in the market evolution of PEVs due to external conditions and the users’ willingness to pay. We find the future share of PEVs in German passenger car stock to range from 0.4% to almost 3% by 2020. Energy prices have a large impact on PEV market evolution as a 25% increase in fuel prices would double the number of PEVs in stock by 2020 compared to a reference scenario. We find a special depreciation allowance for commercial vehicles and a subsidy of 1000 Euro as the most effective and efficient monetary policy options. The high uncertainty of the market evolution implies that policies to foster market diffusion of PEVs should be dynamically adaptable to react to changing framework conditions.     

A network wide simulation strategy of alternative fuel vehicles

This paper presents an integrated simulator “CUIntegration” to evaluate routing strategies based on energy and/or traffic measures of effectiveness for any Alternative Fuel Vehicles (AFVs). The CUIntegration can integrate vehicle models of conventional vehicles as well as AFVs developed with MATLAB-Simulink, and a roadway network model developed with traffic microscopic simulation software VISSIM. The architecture of this simulator is discussed in this paper along with a case study in which the simulator was utilized for evaluating a routing strategy for Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs) and Electric Vehicles (EVs). The authors developed a route optimization algorithm to guide an AFV based on that AFV driver’s choice, which included; finding a route with minimum (1) travel time, (2) energy consumption or (3) a combination of both. The Application Programming Interface (API) was developed using Visual Basic to simulate the vehicle models/algorithms developed in MATLAB and direct vehicles in a roadway network model developed in VISSIM accordingly. The case study included a section of Interstate 83 in Baltimore, Maryland, which was modeled, calibrated and validated. The authors considered a worst-case scenario with an incident on the main route blocking all lanes for 30 min. The PHEVs and EVs were represented by integrating the MATLAB-Simulink vehicle models with the traffic simulator. The CUIntegration successfully combined vehicle models with a roadway traffic network model to support a routing strategy for PHEVs and EVs. Simulation experiments with CUIntegration revealed that routing of PHEVs resulted in cost savings of about 29% when optimized for the energy consumption, and for the same optimization objective, routing of EVs resulted in about 64% savings.     

An activity-based assessment of the potential impacts of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles on energy and emissions using 1-day travel data

This paper assesses the potential energy profile impacts of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and estimates gasoline and electricity demand impacts for California of their adoption. The results are based on simulations replicating vehicle usage patterns reported in 1-day activity and travel diaries based on the 2000–2001 California Statewide Household Travel Survey. Four charging scenarios are examined. We find that circuit upgrades to 240 V not only bring faster charging times but also reduce charging time differences between PHEV20 and PHEV60; home charging can potentially service 40–50% of travel distances with electric power for PHEV20 and 70–80% for PHEV60; equipping public parking spaces with charging facilities, can potentially convert 60–70% of mileage from fuel to electricity for PHEV20, and 80–90% for PHEV60; and afternoons are found to be exposed to a higher level of emissions.     

Is awareness of public charging associated with consumer interest in plug-in electric vehicles?

Policymakers often seek to increase the visibility of plug-in electric vehicle (PEV) chargers in public locations in effort to build familiarity and interest in PEVs. However, it is not clear if the visibility of public charging stations actually has an impact on PEV demand. The purposes of the present study are to (1) assess the current levels of visibility for public PEV charging infrastructure within Canada and (2) identify whether or not a statistically significant relationship exists between consumer awareness of public charging infrastructure and interest in purchasing a PEV. We use data collected from a sample of 1739 Canadian new-vehicle buyers in 2013. About 18% of Canadian respondents have seen at least one public charger, while the proportion is highest in British Columbia (31%). We find a significant bivariate relationship between public charger awareness and PEV interest. However, when controlling for multiple explanatory variables in regression analyses, the relationship is weak or non-existent. While perceived existence of at least one charger exhibits no significant relationship with PEV interest, perceived existence of multiple chargers can have a weak but significant relationship. Thus, public charger awareness is not a strong predictor of PEV interest; other variables are more important, such as the availability of level 1 (110/120-volt) charging at home.