Equitable Distribution of Recharging Stations for Electric Vehicles

Given the limited driving range of battery electric vehicles and lack of sufficient charging infrastructure, locating charging stations is an important decision problem to enable long-distance travels by battery electric vehicles. This paper considers an important political factor in such location problems: the equitable access to charging stations among geographical regions. We propose three types of equity constraints to the flow refueling location model: two constraints based on travel demand and the other based on traffic flow. For solving the problem with flow equity constraints, we propose a multi-phase heuristic method. We test the proposed models and computational method in a real expressway network in Korea.