On the Technical Feasibility of Vehicle to Vehicle Charging for Electric Vehicles via Platooning on Freeways

While internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles are a major contributor to greenhouse gases, electric vehicles (EVs) have proven their potential to achieve eco-friendly transportation. To date, the usage of EVs is limited mainly due to their short driving range and relatively long charging times as well as their insufficient charging infras tructure s, e s pe cially outside major cities or in less developed countries. Dynamic charging is also very limited due to high installation and maintenance cost. To address these issues, a novel moving stationary Vehicle to Vehicle (V2V) charging approach is proposed in this paper which has the potential to mitigate the range anxiety associated with EVs. To this end, we employ cooperative adaptive cruise control (CACC) to form platoons of EVs on freeways which allows EVs to wirelessly exchange their desired amount of electric charge. The proposed methodology is threefold; a novel platoon structure, a sophisticated collision-free longitudinal control which regulates asmallgap between the supplier and recipient vehicles, and a new lane-changing framework that allows a proper catch-up phase as well as cut in/out maneuvers. The proposed approach is tested in a stretch of a relatively long freeway with on-and off-ramps in SUMO traffic simulator. The results demonstrate about 90% of successful power transfer among vehicles with feasible V2V capability. In addition, the employed approach demonstrates a promising speed and gap control for recipient and supplier vehicles which is indeed essential for an efficient power transfer.