Routing of Electric Vehicles: Constrained Shortest Path Problems with Resource Recovering Nodes

We consider a constrained shortest path problem with the possibility to refill the resource at certain nodes. This problem is motivated by routing electric vehicles with a comparatively short cruising range due to the limited battery capacity. Thus, for longer distances the battery has to be recharged on the way. Furthermore, electric vehicles can recuperate energy during downhill drive. We extend the common constrained shortest path problem to arbitrary costs on edges and we allow regaining resources at the cost of higher travel time. We show that this yields not shortest paths but shortest walks that may contain an arbitrary number of cycles. We study the structure of optimal solutions and develop approximation algorithms for finding short walks under mild assumptions on charging functions. We also address a corresponding network flow problem that generalizes these walks. 1998 ACM Subject Classification G.2.2 Graph Theory – Path and circuit problems, Network problems, G.2.3 Applications