Joint fleet size and charging station location planning for integrated demand responsive transport service using electric vehicles

Electric vehicles have gained popularity over past decades as they are more environmentally friendly than conventional gasoline vehicles. This thesis studies the optimization of joint fleet size and number and location of charging stations location problem for integrated demand responsive transport (DRT) service using electric vehicles. We propose a simulation-optimization framework to model the problem and solve it approximately using a two-stage approach. Under the given framework we firstly determine the minimum fleet size which satisfies a predefined level of service (LOS) criterion, and then optimize the charging infrastructure using a surrogate-based approach. The proposed method is tested using both a generated dataset and a Luxembourg dataset. The result shows that installing 18 new DC Fast chargers in optimal locations in Luxembourg can decrease the average charging operation time of EVs (electric vehicles) by 45.1%. A comparison with another charging station allocation method k-means also proves the efficiency of the proposed method.