Integrated Optimization of Routing and Energy Management for Electric Vehicles in Delivery Scheduling

Abstract

At present, electric vehicles (EVs) are attracting increasing attention and have great potential for replacing fossil-fueled vehicles, especially for logistics applications. However, energy management for EVs is essential for them to be advantageous owing to their limitations with regard to battery capacity and recharging times. Therefore, inefficiencies can be expected for EV-based logistical operations without an energy management plan, which is not necessarily considered in traditional routing exercises. In this study, for the logistics application of EVs to manage energy and schedule the vehicle route, a system is proposed. The system comprises two parts: (1) a case-based reasoning subsystem to forecast the energy consumption and travel time for each route section, and (2) a genetic algorithm to optimize vehicle routing with an energy consumption situation as a new constraint. A dynamic adjustment algorithm is also adopted to achieve a rapid response to accidents in which the vehicles might be involved. Finally, a simulation is performed to test the system by adjusting the data from the vehicle routing problem with time windows. Solomon benchmarks are used for the validations. The analysis results show that the proposed vehicle management system is more economical than the traditional method.