Express Charging Lanes for Electric Vehicle Evacuation

The long-distance evacuation of electric vehicles (EVs) presents significant challenges for disaster management owing to their limited driving range and constrained charging infrastructure. EVs with long charging times can create negative externalities for all other EVs waiting in queues, especially during evacuation scenarios. This study investigates the use of express charging lanes to reduce overall evacuation delays. We propose optimization models to optimize the allocation of charging plugs for express and regular charging, considering both user-equilibrium and system-optimal scenarios. To account for heterogeneities and uncertainties, such as stochastic EV arrival patterns and variable charging demands, we further develop numerical simulation models to quantify the delay distribution. We found that separating EVs with lower charging demand had the potential to minimize total system delay. The proposed models identified the optimal level of express charging plug allocation to minimize the total charging delay without centralized enforcement of traffic distribution. In addition, the models could enable government agencies to estimate the required charging resources to fulfill an evacuation within a given time window. The insights generated by the proposed theoretical models were validated using agent-based simulation, in which uncertainties could be flexibly represented.