Electric motor vehicles appears to dominate the transport sector currently, this needed transition from internal combustion engine (ICE) towards Electric Vehicles (EV) to tackle urban pollution.
Investigation of the EV drivers travel behaviour is of great importance to car makers including planners and policymakers, to ensure correct infrastructure is available and in place.
The Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV) drivers route choice and charging preferences have been collected in many recent surveys.
The influencers to this are kind of changeable initial charge rate, capacity of battery, travel time, travel distance all have dramatic effect on this.
Local streets (slow speeds and less energy consumption) could be preferred if the state of charge at the destination is expected to be low while main road ways might be selected when a driver must recharge their car during the trip by fast charging.
Charging stations can be categorised into private, semi-public, and public ones. Private and semi-public charging refers to the charging points installed at home or workplace while public chargers are installed at public places including airports, railway stations, shopping malls, traffic hotspots, highways, parking lots.
Charging points are also classified into slow and fast charging based on the recharging time. The former takes longer to recharge an EV. On average, a BEV needs 6–8 h and 20–40 min to be recharged with a slow charger and a fast charger.
The charging behaviour of EV drivers has been investigated, slow charging and fast charging. Slow charging is usually used when a driver intends to stay (possibly for a longer periods) at a particular place such as their home or job location while fast charging points have been mostly installed in the main streets and motorways to enable EV drivers to recharge their cars during their trips which are similar to todays gas stations.
According to the findings fast charging opportunity is the crucial element for the development and adoption of EVs. It was observed that fast charging could potentially reduce range anxiety and increase driving distance.
Overall, it was found that drivers are sensitive to charging costs and duration. This shows the necessity of including both fast charging and slow charging in the analysis of EV drivers charging behaviour.
The impact of electric driving on the route choice and charging behaviour of BEV drivers is discussed below.
There are mixed underlying factors in the BEV drivers decisions as to routes chosen. This suggests that the BEV drivers route and charging preferences are dependent on the route attributes, vehicle-related variables, charging characteristics, and socio-economic factors.
Classic route attributes including route travel time and travel cost as well as fast charging-related variables such as charging time and waiting time are significant determinants in that any increase in their value on a specific route leads to a negative effect on the selection of that route.
The estimation results, a higher SOC at the origin can stimulate drivers to select a route without fast charging. This is because the high level of initial SOC gives more confidence to the driver in order to make the trip without fast charging. On the other hand, routes without fast charging might be preferred if a slow charging opportunity is provided at the destination next to the workplace of the respondent. Developing a trip planner application which is able to estimate the electricity consumption in different routes between a pair of OD and also show the availability of slow charging points at the destination could be a promising tool helping EV users to select an efficient route and charging method.
Local streets are preferred over motoways and arterial ways when SOC at the destination is estimated to be zero. This is because local streets have the lowest consumption level compared to the other streets.
EV drivers have a tendency to select a route with the lowest consumption even with the highest travel time to ensure that they can arrive at either a fast charging point in the case of charging during the trip or a slow charging point at the destination when a route without fast charging is selected.
Arterial ways with intermediate fast charge are favoured when charging is really necessary in order to arrive at the destination. This is because arterial ways stand between motorways and local streets in terms of travel time and consumption level which might be valued equivalently by travellers in this scenario.