Bargaining Game-Based Pricing for Electric Vehicle Roaming Charging Services

The burgeoning of electric vehicles (EVs) has led to an imperative to strengthen the interoperability among various charging facilities in different charging networks. To achieve interoperability, EV roaming, facilitated by the roaming protocol, can be implemented to facilitate data exchange among entities. To this end, it is important to design a pricing strategy that can ensure that all charging point operators (CPOs) follow the EV roaming protocol and allow for greater mobility of EV users. Hence, in this article, we propose a pricing strategy for EV roaming charging services. First, the charging interaction between CPOs and EV users under the same EV roaming protocol is analyzed, which emphasizes its holistic approach to understanding user dynamics in the EV charging market. Second, a bargaining game-based pricing strategy, specifically drawing from the Nash–Harsanyi game framework, is proposed to ascertain the markup fee and the optimal bargaining price for each participating CPO operating under a unified EV roaming protocol. Third, three types of irrational behaviors of EV users are mathematically modeled by applying mental accounting theory. The numerical results show that the proposed pricing strategy can facilitate CPOs to earn higher net profits on average and enhance the utility of EV users.