Exploring the potential of sharing private charging posts: A data-driven micro-simulation approach

The lack of charging infrastructure has been one of the main barriers to the uptake of electric vehicles (EVs), and sharing private charging facilities could be a promising solution. This paper explored the potential of private home charging post sharing (PHCPS) (specifically, the impact of PHCPS on the usage of EVs and public and private charging posts) in Beijing using a data-driven micro-simulation approach. In the simulation, EV users’ travel and charging behaviors were defined with empirical findings from a trajectory dataset collected from over 76,000 private EVs in January of 2018. We quantified the potential by comparing the results of simulations with and without PHCPS. In the baseline scenario, we found that PHCPS gave rise to 6.32 % increase in the proportion of parking events with accessible charging posts and 33.37 % decrease in the average electricity provided by a public charging post on a working day. The results suggest that PHCPS could provide more charging opportunities for private EV users and decrease private EV users’ dependence on public charging stations, revealing the great potential of promoting PHCPS in the EV charging market.