Reducing Aggregate Electric Vehicle Battery Capacity through Sharing

Meeting growing demand for automotive battery resources is predicted to be costly from both economic and environmental perspectives. To minimize these costs, battery resources should be deployed as efficiently as possible. A potential source of inefficiency in battery deployment is the fact that the batteries of personal vehicles are typically much larger than needed to meet most daily mobility needs. In this paper, we consider whether battery resources can be used more efficiently in a setting where drivers, in addition to having personal vehicle batteries, have access to a shared battery resource. More precisely, we consider the problem of minimizing aggregate battery capacity in settings with and without a shared resource subject to the requirement that driver commuting needs are met with high reliability. To assess the potential for reductions in deployed battery capacity with the addition of a shared resource, we quantify the difference in deployed battery capacity with and without a shared resource in case study using real-world longitudinal mobility data from Puget Sound, Washington. We find that giving drivers access to a shared battery resource can substantially reduces deployed battery capacity. Furthermore, relative reductions in battery capacity increase with number of drivers and the level of reliability desired.