Electric vehicle charging network design with capacity and service considerations

Electric Vehicles (EVs) have a critical role in the future of sustainable transportation systems. Recently, improving the infrastructure for EVs has been a major focus of organizations around the world, such as local and federal governments, energy companies, and automotive original equipment manufacturers. In this article, we present a service network design framework to improve the infrastructure for EVs with quality of service constraints taken into consideration. We present a novel charging station location model with capacity allocation. The model maximizes the EV traffic flow captured and minimizes the average service time for drivers. The model formulation allows for assessing capacity and quality of service trade-offs, and operational insights are presented to reflect drivers’ expectations. We demonstrate an application for the solution approach on a real road network and evaluate the performance based on both computational efficiency and solution quality. Our results highlight how charging times at stations affect the quality of service in the whole service system by quantifying the improvements in flow coverage while reducing waiting times. The value of faster chargers in increasing coverage and reducing the average waiting times is also highlighted in relation to a service provider’s budget constraints.