Electric vehicle routing problem with time windows and stochastic waiting times at recharging stations

Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/WSC40007.2019.9004766

The Electric Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows and Stochastic Waiting Times at Recharging Stations is an extension of the Electric Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows where the vehicles may wait in the queue before recharging their battery due to a limited number of available chargers. Long waiting times at the stations may cause delays for both the customers and the depot. In this study, we model the waiting times using M/M/1 queueing system equations. We solve small instances by CPLEX assuming expected waiting times at the stations and calculate the reliability of these solutions by simulating the waiting times. We observe that, while chargers become busier, the reliability of the solutions obtained with average times decreases.