Path Finding Algorithm in Consideration of EVs’ Charging Behavior on Multi-Agent Based Traffic Simulation

Abstract

In recent years, there has been a growing demand for low carbon and energy saving in the transportation sector. Meanwhile, some auto mobile companies started to introduce their own electric vehicles (EVs) better environmental performance than gasoline vehicles into the Japan market in 2009. However, their widespread adoption is hindered by a plurality of different factors in comparison with gasoline vehicles, i.e. short cursing distance, expensive purchase price, lack of charging stations and long charging time. Various researches and developments have been actively conducted in order to solve these problems. Among them, recommendation of energy efficient path via charging station (CS) is one of the promising solutions. In this paper, we propose a new path finding algorithm in consideration of EVs’ charging behavior on microscopic traffic simulation. The proposed method was validated through comparison experiments on grid network environment with ad hoc methods in conventional research. As a result, it showed that the proposed method yields an energy efficient route although the computation time increases. In addition, it shows good robustness under congestion and fluctuation of traffic volume, as a result of comparing the probability of out-of-charge and the amount of power consumption in the numerical experiments between proposed method and ad hoc method.