Incorporating Bounded Rationality Into Electric Vehicle Highway Charging Decisions: A Bayesian Game Analysis

Electric vehicles (EVs) represent a critical intelligent terminal within the Internet of Things (IoT). Despite the year-on-year growth in EV penetration, the highway driving experience still requires improvement. Accurate prediction of EV highway charging behavior is crucial to addressing this issue. This article introduces a novel bounded rationality framework to analyze highway charging decisions. Specifically, we utilize the prospect theory to capture the tendency of drivers to reserve more electricity than theoretically necessary. We then propose a Bayesian game in which EV drivers, unaware of others’ decisions, aim to minimize costs, including range anxiety, charging fees, and queuing time. To gain insights into the game, we prove the existence and uniqueness of the Bayesian Nash equilibrium in two practical scenarios. Our numerical experiments, based on real-life data, demonstrate that drivers’ risk aversion tendency significantly influence EV charging decisions, charging demand, queuing lengths at charging stations (CSs), and the departure rate on the highway network. Furthermore, our strategy reduces cumulative EV cost and CSs’ charging costs compared to other benchmarks.