How Smart Cities Must Plan for Electric Cars

MIT Technology Review

In a smart city, every electric vehicle must have access to a charging station within its driving range. So how should these stations be located? The good news: computer scientists have solved the general version of this problem. The bad news: it’s NP-hard.

As demand for electric cars rises, smart cities will need to provide charging stations for every electric vehicle within driving range. Charging stations cannot be added to existing gas stations due to limited gas station space, and the fact that most electric cars have a lower range than gasoline-powered cars, which might make the existing network of stations inadequate.

Instead charging stations will likely need to be located in designated parking spots along the road and in car parks. Hong Kong Baptist University computer scientists have written several algorithms to help determine where to locate the charging stations. The team began by defining conditions that a grid of charging stations must satisfy to be properly planned for electric vehicles, with the first being that the distance between stations must be less than the range of the vehicle.

The next condition relates to the number of electric cars in the area around a charging station, which impacts the local charging demand that must be met by the local charging station and a certain percentage of other stations within range. Although there is no easy solution to locating the stations, the researchers approach would randomly distribute charging stations and test to see if the network meets the criteria.  Article