The role of ITS in charging opportunities for EVs

We give a comprehensive, market-flavoured look at the networks of electric vehicles (EVs) and their components: vehicles, charging stations, and coalitions of stations. We start by separately studying (i) how autonomously operated charging stations form coalitions; (ii) the price policy enacted by such coalitions; (iii) how vehicles select the charging station to use, pursuing a time/price trade-off. Then, we propose a model in which individual stations, coalitions of stations and vehicles interact in reaching a market equilibrium. We also address the issue of computational complexity, showing that, through our model, equilibria can be found in polynomial time. We evaluate our model in a realistic scenario, focusing on its ability to capture the consequences of the availability of an ITS system supporting the EV drivers, and to mimick the anticompetitive behavior that charging stations are likely to follow.