Evaluating the importance and impact of user behavior on public destination charging of electric vehicles

Abstract

With an increasing number of electric vehicles (EVs) on the road the need for charging stations increases. Some of these stations are placed at the destinations of drivers rather than along the route of their trip. The aim of this paper is to highlight the importance of user behavior in the context of public destination charging and to provide an extension for existing evaluation methods. We identify losses in demand and potential revenue and show how they are influenced by user behavior. Different scenarios are analyzed to demonstrate the effect of single parameters and to quantify their impact on revenue. To demonstrate the interaction between parameters we present a case study on supermarkets in a medium sized German city. The results show that user behavior is an important factor for the economic evaluation of public destination charging stations and therefore needs to be considered in future evaluation methods. In addition, we show that charging station operators have the possibility to counteract losses by providing more charging stations or increasing the charging power.