Principle Investigator: Debapriya Chakraborty
Co-principle investigator: Alan Jenn
Project Funder: Next 10
Adoption of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) can offer both environmental and cost-saving benefits to households. To take advantage of the latter, however, individuals need to have access to cost-effective vehicle charging options for all types of trips. The federal government under the new National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) Formula Program along with the state government of California are investing billions of dollars to build a network of chargers to ensure a convenient, reliable, affordable, and equitable charging experience for all users. The investments are mostly directed towards building fast charging network along travel corridors, to support the charging needs of BEV adopters living in non-urban areas and those taking their BEVs for long-distance trips. There are a limited number of studies with quantitative evaluation of factors driving preferences during occasional charging events that are mostly done on long-distance trips. In addition to filling the gap in our understanding of charging location preferences for occasional charging needs, it is also necessary to research the economics of non-home charging locations used for day-to-day regular charging events - characteristics including pricing strategies that can allow financial sustainability of public charging stations.
This project has two tasks to support understanding and improving the business case for public EV charging infrastructure. In task 1, the goal is to understand, through a stated preference survey of EV owners, attributes and factors that impact consumers' use of public EV charging infrastructure for regular trips like work commute or local trips and fast charging infrastructure use during long distance trips. In task 2 we will identify viable business cases for EV infrastructure based on current installation and operating costs and potential revenue generation steams and alternative pricing plans.