Electric vehicle fleet size and trip pricing for one-way carsharing services considering vehicle relocation and personnel assignment

This study proposes an interesting electric vehicle fleet size and trip pricing (EVFS&TP) problem for one-way carsharing services by taking into account the necessary practical requirements of vehicle relocation and personnel assignment. The EVFS&TP problem aims to maximize the profit of one-way carsharing operators by determining the electric vehicle fleet size, trip pricing, and strategies of vehicle relocation and personnel assignment subject to the elastic demand for the one-way carsharing services. A mixed-integer nonlinear and nonconvex programming model is first built for the EVFS&TP problem. By exploiting the unique structure of the original built model, a mixed-integer convex programming model is subsequently developed. An effective global optimization method with several outer-approximation schemes is put up to find the global optimal or e-optimal solution to the EVFS&TP problem. A case study based on a one-way carsharing operator in Singapore is conducted to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed model and solution method and further analyse the impact of demand, the degree of demand variation, the fixed operational cost of the vehicles as well as payment for personnel on the performance of the one-way carsharing services. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.