Charging Station Operation Strategies for the Ride-Hailing Platform With New Energy Vehicles: Independence, Cooperation or Registration

Abstract

With the widespread adoption of new energy vehicles (NEVs) in the ride-hailing market, optimizing charging station operation strategies to enhance service efficiency has become a critical concern for ride-hailing platforms. This study investigates a ride-hailing market comprising a ride-hailing platform, a charging provider, and an NEV rental company. The article proposes three distinct strategies—independence, cooperation, and registration—and assesses their impact on both the profitability of market participants and the overall social welfare. We find that, when determining the optimal strategy, the platform must consider multiple market factors, including the construction cost coefficient of charging stations. First, under conditions of high commission rates, low government subsidies, and low technology service fees, the platform can achieve maximum profit through the cooperation strategy. Additionally, when the construction cost coefficient reaches a sufficiently high level, the platform still tends to adopt the cooperation strategy even with moderate levels of government subsidies and technology service fees, illustrating the flexibility of feasible conditions. Furthermore, a lower technology service fee is vital to achieve a win–win outcome between the platform and the charging provider. Second, beyond scenarios with high commission rates, subsidies, and technology service fees, the platform also chooses to register a charging service company under scenarios with moderate subsidies and low technology service fees or with low commission rates. Finally, the extended model further explores various real-world scenarios, verifies the robustness of the main conclusions, and reveals several new research findings.