Cooperative Routing and Scheduling of an Electric Vehicle Fleet Managing Dynamic Customer Requests

Environmental issues and consumer concerns have paved the way for governments to legislate and help usher into operation alternative-fueled vehicles and pertinent infrastructures. In the last decade, battery-powered electric vehicles have been introduced and the service industry has followed suit and deployed such trucks in their distribution networks. However, electric vehicles do impose limitations when it comes to their traveling range. Replenishing the power to the vehicle batteries may entail lengthy charging visits at respective stations. In this paper, we examine the problem of routing and scheduling a fleet of electric vehicles that seek to satisfy dynamic pickup and delivery requests in an urban environment. We develop a web application to facilitate cooperation between organizations and individuals involved in urban freight transport. The application uses geolocation services and mobile devices to help manage the fleet and make timely decisions. Moreover, we propose three heuristic recharging strategies to ensure that electric vehicles can restore their energy levels in an effective manner. Through detailed experimentation, we show that the costs associated with the use of an electric vehicle fleet concern mainly the size of the fleet. The impact regarding the total route length traveled is less evident for all our strategies.