Study on taxi mode selection dynamics based on evolutionary game theory

At present, taxi market is in a transition phase, with traditional vehicles coexisting with driverless vehicles, and online services going side-by-side with offline services. In view of this, this paper put forward an evolutionary game model of tripartite competition involving passengers, driverless taxis, and traditional taxis, whereby the influence of factors, such as the scale and fare of driverless taxis, on the stable equilibrium state of the dynamical system is studied. Simulation results show that game players are very sensitive to the change of cost in terms of strategy choice: within the range of feasible parameters, the system converges to a stable state where passengers, driverless taxis, and traditional taxis all adopt online services, or all adopt offline services, depending on the ratio of driverless taxi fare to traditional taxi fare. Besides, the scale of driverless taxis and the corresponding technological level also exert an impact on the evolution of system dynamics: reducing the cruise energy consumption of driverless vehicles or improving the scheduling level of the platform can significantly promote taxi online service modes. Through this simple but representative model, the paper provides a new research idea and framework for the development of driverless taxi service modes.