Revealing spatiotemporal characteristics of EV car-sharing systems: A case study in Shanghai, China

Abstract

Electric vehicle (EV) car sharing, as an emerging mode of transportation, has been paid increasingly amount of attention by scholars in recent years. However, at the operational level, we still know very little about its spatiotemporal characteristics, especially its temporal associations with land use patterns. In this study, we comprehensively investigated these two aspects by utilizing longitudinal data of the one-way EV car-sharing system in Shanghai, China, with a total count exceeding 50,000 vehicles in 2018. The results showed an unmatched coupling relationship in terms of the spatial dimension between EV car-sharing flow communities and intra-city administrative divisions. For the temporal dimension, we found that, unlike the conventional division of peak and non-peak hours, there are nine different types of car use behaviors in terms of temporal variations in EV car-sharing travel in Shanghai. We further revealed that such temporal variations, in terms of temporal attractiveness, can be significantly affected by land-use characteristics, including healthcare services, lifestyle services, companies and enterprises, and scientific, educational, and cultural services, indicating a strong and complex interaction between land use and the pattern in car use behaviors of this emerging mode of transportation. This data-driven study offers new insights into EV car-sharing operations and provides better understanding of EV car-use behaviors, which may promote evidence-informed decisions and policymaking for megacity authorities.