The electric vehicle routing problem with partial charging and nonlinear charging function

Abstract

SDO;

Electric vehicle routing problems (eVRPs) extend classical routing problems to consider the limited driving range of electric vehicles. In general, this limitation is overcome by introducing planned detours to battery charging stations. Most existing eVRP models rely on one (or both) of the following assumptions: (i) the vehicles fully charge their batteries every time they reach a charging station, and (ii) the battery charge level is a linear function of the charging time. In practical situations, however, the amount of charge is a decision variable, and the battery charge level is a concave function of the charging time.In this paper we extend current eVRP models to consider partial charging and nonlinear charging functions. We present a computational study comparing our assumptions with those commonly made in the literature. Our results suggest that neglecting partial and nonlinear charging may lead to infeasible or overly expensive solutions.