Charging Strategies and Implications for Corporate Electric Vehicle Fleets

Employees are increasingly using electric vehicles (EVs) as their choice of company car. This means modern companies are becoming owners of EV fleets that need to charge on company premises. Without an effective charging strategy the cost of running an EV charging infrastructure for a large fleet of company EVs quickly becomes prohibitive. For this purpose, we investigate three different charging strategies: (i) a “naive” baseline strategy, (ii) intelligent charging (using an optimal schedule) and (iii) multi-location intelligent charging (i.e. allowing charging at home). Experimental results from simulations show how the selection of a charging strategy affects the number of adequately charged EVs as well as infrastructure utilization. Multi-location intelligent charging is the most effective strategy.