Netw Spat Econ
DOI 10.1007/s11067-017-9358-x
Multicriteria Stochastic Shortest Path Problem
for Electric Vehicles
Ehsan Jafari
1
· Stephen D. Boyles
1
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2017
Abstract This paper formulates the reliable routing of electric vehicles in stochas-
tic networks as a multicriteria shortest path problem with travel time and charging
cost components. The reliability term is defined as the probability of finishing the
trip without running out of charge. The arc travel times are represented as stochastic
variables, and arc energy consumption is modeled as a linear function of arc length
and arc travel time. The traveler aims to minimize the generalized cost, formulated
as a linear function of travel time and charging cost, subject to a minimum reliability
threshold, representing the level of risk a traveler is willing to take in favor of routes
with lower cost. We propose a solution algorithm based on generalized dynamic
programming and show that the optimal solution may include cycles that visit at
least one charging station. The properties of the proposed multicriteria shortest path
problem are mathematically proved. The simulation results on randomly-generated
networks show that cyclic paths are very rare, and that the generalized cost of travel
is a monotone increasing function of minimum reliability threshold.
Keywords Electric vehicles · Stochastic networks · Range anxiety · Generalized
dynamic programming · Reliability
1 Introduction
Electric vehicles (EVs) are promising solutions to pollution issues and dependency
of transportation network on fossil fuel. These vehicles, however, face two major
Ehsan Jafari
ejafari@utexas.edu
1
The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA