Modelling and Performance Analysis of Electric Car-Sharing Systems Using Petri Nets

Abstract

Car sharing systems emerged as a new answer to mobility challenges in smart and sustainable cities. Despite their apparent success, design and exploitation of such systems raise crucial strategic and operational challenges. To help planners and decision makers, simulation, analysis and optimization models are unavoidable. Based on the formal modelling and analysis power of stochastic Petri nets, this paper proposes a discrete event simulation model for electric car sharing systems for performance and analysis purposes, taking into account their complex dynamic behaviour, organization and parameters including capacities of the stations, battery and energy availability, locations of charging stations and also their car maintenance activities, not negligible compared to the case of bike-sharing systems.