Inventory rebalancing for one-way electric vehicle sharing systems

Electric vehicle sharing (EVS) systems are increasingly being seen as a sustainable alternative to conventional vehicles. In this paper, we tackle the problem of rebalancing the inventory of one-way EVS systems by proposing a dynamic pricing approach. We propose a method that helps to establish a self-balancing inventory system through dynamic pricing for which a system operator proposes to incoming users a better price if they choose an alternative combination of pick-up and drop-off stations that will improve the system inventory balance. We also present computationally tractable algorithms to implement the proposed models, which are requisites for implementing dynamic pricing system. We provide examples in which the proposed dynamic pricing approach and a staff-based rebalancing approach are compared in terms of the number of unbalanced stations at the end of the planning horizon and the total rebalancing cost to make the inventory balanced for the next planning horizon.