Evaluation of alternative battery charging schemes for one-way electric vehicle smart mobility sharing systems based on real urban trip data

Electric vehicle sharing (e.g. ebike and e-scooter) is seen as an option to reduce the external effects of traffic (e.g. pollution, land use, traffic congestion) within urban environments. However, the flexibility and spontaneity of one-way shared mobility increases the complexity of integrating electric vehicles into hire fleets compared with round-trip vehicle sharing and commercial fleets or privately-owned vehicles. The study outlined in this paper explores the technical requirements and additional workload of shared electric vehicles compared with conventional bike sharing by simulating various battery charging schemes for shared electric vehicles based on real trip data obtained from the bike sharing system Citi Bike deployed within New York City. The first two scenarios evaluated assume that all batteries are changed at midnight (scenario 1) or during each relocation trip (scenario 2). For both scenarios, the number of additionally required battery changes is calculated depending on the battery range. The third scenario assumes that electric vehicles are able to be charged at bike sharing stations. The state of charge (SoC) after every trip is calculated depending on the battery range and charging speeds for various numbers of stations where charging is possible. It is found that the required range of the journeys would be too large to be supported by electric vehicles if batteries are only changed during relocation trips. However, the required battery range and charging speeds are in a realistic range if all batteries are changed one time a day or when the batteries are charged at all stations.