DOI

10.5703/1288284317436

Date of this Version

2019

Keywords

electric vehicles, plug-in, charging station, utilization

Abstract

As electric mobility is expanding at a rapid pace, the standardized availability of gas stations compared to a scarcity of charging stations continues to be the greatest challenge for electric vehicles. With cities, university campuses and businesses promoting electric vehicle infrastructure and incentives, it is necessary to develop key performance metrics and visualizations that can track the utilization of the charging infrastructure. This study performs a manual data collection at dedicated plug-in charging stations across Purdue University to assess their utilization. Approximately 2,800 observations were conducted over 50 days across seven level 2 plug-in charging stations. Results showed that for large portion of the observations, vehicles were parked at the spots (40%) but not plugged in. Vehicles plugged in to charging stations accounted for 34% of observations. Charging station spots were vacant for 25% of observations indicating that current infrastructure meets the demand. There were 74 unique vehicles that used the spots, of which 27% were plugged in more than 10 times. Illegally parked vehicles accounted for less than 1% with only 4 repeat offenders who used these spots more than once. As electric deployment continues to increase, performance metrics will be an integral tool for agencies and decision makers to help with the maintenance and expansion of electric vehicle infrastructure.

Comments

This report was presented at the 2019 TRB conference but has not been previously published.

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