A Stochastic Electric Vehicle Routing Problem under Uncertain Energy Consumption

TL;DR

This paper introduces a stochastic model for electric vehicle routing that accounts for uncertain energy consumption, employing a recourse policy and heuristic methods to optimize routes and recharging strategies under uncertainty.

Contribution

It formulates a two-stage stochastic mixed-integer second-order cone model for EV routing with energy uncertainty and proposes a heuristic with scenario reduction techniques for efficient solutions.

Findings

The heuristic effectively reduces computational time.

Considering stochastic energy consumption improves routing robustness.

Scenario reduction enhances solution scalability.

Abstract

The increasing adoption of Electric Vehicles (EVs) for service and goods distribution operations has led to the emergence of Electric Vehicle Routing Problems (EVRPs), a class of vehicle routing problems addressing the unique challenges posed by the limited driving range and recharging needs of EVs. While the majority of EVRP variants have considered deterministic energy consumption, this paper focuses on the Stochastic Electric Vehicle Routing Problem with a Threshold recourse policy (SEVRP-T), where the uncertainty in energy consumption is considered, and a recourse policy is employed to ensure that EVs recharge at Charging Stations (CSs) whenever their State of Charge (SoC) falls below a specified threshold. We formulate the SEVRP-T as a two-stage stochastic mixed-integer second-order cone model, where the first stage determines the sequences of customers to be visited, and the second stage incorporates charging activities. The objective is to minimize the expected total duration of the routes, composed by travel times and recharging operations. To cope with the computational complexity of the model, we propose a heuristic based on an Iterated Local Search (ILS) procedure coupled with a Set Partitioning problem. To further speed up the heuristic, we develop two lower bounds on the corresponding first-stage customer sequences. Furthermore, to handle a large number of energy consumption scenarios, we employ a scenario reduction technique. Extensive computational experiments are conducted to validate the effectiveness of the proposed solution strategy and to assess the importance of considering the stochastic nature of the energy consumption. The research presented in this paper contributes to the growing body of literature on EVRP and provides insights into managing the operational deployment of EVs in logistics activities under uncertainty.