Cartel formation in charging network for electric vehicles

Electric Vehicles ( EVs) depend on the charging network for their range and uninterrupted traversal across the city. Such dependency may be exploited by the firms who establish the charging stations. In this paper, we analyse the cartel formation among the firms who establish the charging stations. By forming cartel, the firms can establish individual monopoly at various localities across the city, i.e., the charging stations in a locality is controlled by only one firm. Hence it can manipulate the price as the limited range of the EVs compel them to use the stations only in their respective localities. In this paper, we analyse complexity of deciding on such cartel and we also propose mechanism that can prevent such cartel formation.