Charging Electric Vehicles with Valet: a Novel Business Model to Promote Transportation Electrification

This paper considers on-demand valet charging for electric vehicles (EVs) to promote transportation electrification. We propose a novel business model where a platform recruits a fleet of couriers to provide valet charging services to EV owners at an affordable price. Couriers are dispatched to deliver the out-of-battery EVs to charging stations, plug in the cars, and drive them back to customers when the EVs are fully charged. To depict the proposed business model, a queuing network is formulated to capture the stochasticity of the matching dynamics, and an economic equilibrium model is proposed to characterize the interactions among couriers, EV owners, and the platform. Based on the model, we investigate the optimal pricing strategies of the platform and quantify the impacts of charging infrastructure planning on the market outcomes. We show that the interests of different stakeholders are not consistent: couriers enjoy a higher surplus under a lower charging station density, while the platform prefers a higher density as it leads to a higher markup. We identify the critical density of charging stations that achieves the highest EV penetration, and we show that it trades off the time traveling to and waiting at the charging stations. We also briefly analyze the regulatory challenges and suggest prospective directions for government interventions.