Electric vehicle travel optimization-customer satisfaction despite resource constraints

Abstract

Consumers and producers of mobility products have been co-creating a mobile world - all within the limits of political regulation and infrastructure realities. With the advent of electric vehicles, the existing mobile world requires adaptation: Producers need to create new ecosystems and mobility concepts ([1], [2]), infrastructure requires adaptation ([1]) and lastly consumers might revisit their expectations. Particularly challenging is the market introduction phase of electric vehicles. Neither have the potentials of the infrastructure and the electric vehicles been fully exploited, nor have consumers become accustomed to electric vehicles and shaped their expectations accordingly. Making electric vehicles a success story requires the satisfaction of customer expectations in the face of both electric vehicle and infrastructure realities. This paper suggests an optimization approach which maximizes customer satisfaction for existing electric vehicle and infrastructure realities. For various degrees-of-freedom (DoF) of the mobility system, the improvement potential is analysed with respect to consumption, charging time, cost and travel time. Moreover, the optimization complexity is analysed, which scales with the number of DoF. The approach enables market entry of electric vehicles and provides the means for future e-navigation and e-travel-planning.