Influence of charging behaviour given charging station placement at existing petrol stations and residential car park locations in Singapore

Electric Vehicles (EVs) are set to play a crucial role in making transportation systems more sustainable. However, charging infrastructure needs to be built up before EV adoption can increase. A crucial factor that is ignored in most existing studies of optimal charging station (CS) deployment is the role played by the charging behaviour of drivers. In this study, through an agent-based traffic simulation, we analyse the impact of different driver charging behaviour under the assumption that CSs are placed at existing petrol stations and residential car park locations in Singapore. Three models are implemented: a simple model with a charging threshold and two more sophisticated models where the driver takes the current trip distance and existing CS locations into account. We analyse the performance of these three charging behaviours with respect to a number of different measures. Results suggest that charging behaviours do indeed have a significant impact on the simulation outcome. We also discover that the sensitivity of model parameters in each charging behaviour is an important factor to consider as variations in model parameter can lead to significant different results.