Reducing Aggregate Electric Vehicle Battery Capacity Through Sharing

Meeting demand for automotive battery resources is predicted to be costly from both economic and environmental perspectives. To minimize costs, battery resources should be deployed as efficiently as possible. A potential source of inefficiency in battery deployment is that the batteries of personal vehicles are typically much larger than necessary 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 capacity reduction potential, we quantify the difference in deployed battery capacity in settings with and without a shared resource in a case study using real-world longitudinal mobility data from Puget Sound, Washington. We find that access to a shared battery resource can substantially reduce deployed battery capacity. Furthermore, relative reductions in battery capacity increase with number of drivers and the level of reliability desired.