Evacuation behaviors of electric vehicle drivers: route and charging choice experiments

During habitual travel, electric vehicle (EV) drivers’ routes and charging infrastructure choices are associated with their vehicle’s driving range, recharging times, and infrastructure access. During an extreme event that warrants evacuation, motorists’ decisions (e.g., routing) are associated with personal and household characteristics, regional and road features, and the hazard’s severity. As the number of EV drivers increases in our road networks, vehicle technological specifications may further complicate evacuation routing and charging decisions. We conduct a stated preference (SP) survey and statistical modeling to identify the effect of electric vehicle specifications and charging station characteristics on EV drivers’ evacuation decisions: routing and charging choices. The stated preference survey consists of 12 route choice experiments of short- and long-distance evacuation simulations under mandatory evacuation orders. The survey considered key attributes, including evacuation distance, travel time, queuing and charging duration, battery state of charge, locations of charging stations, and correlation between route choices. The data was analyzed using two discrete choice models: a multinomial logit model and a two-level nested logit model. Our findings uncover the effects of vehicle and charging station characteristics on EV drivers’ evacuation behavior, while the behavioral model coupled with stochastic user equilibrium traffic assignment capture evacuation flows in the Chicago and South Florida networks, inform policy implications and provide evacuation preparedness recommendations.