Economic Analysis of the Dynamic Charging Electric Vehicle

A wireless charging or inductive charging electric vehicle (EV) is a type of EVs with a battery that is charged from a charging infrastructure, using a wireless power transfer technology. Wireless charging EVs are classified as stationary or dynamic charging EVs. Stationary charging EVs charge wirelessly when they are parked, and dynamic charging EVs can charge while they are in motion. The online electric vehicle developed at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology is an example of a commercially available dynamic charging transportation system. Numerous studies have reported that one of the benefits of dynamic charging is that it allows smaller and lighter batteries to be used, due to frequent charging using the charging infrastructure embedded under roads. In this paper, we quantitatively analyze the benefits of dynamic charging with an economic model of battery size and charging infrastructure allocation, using a mathematical optimization model. Particularly, we analyze by how much battery size can be reduced and what the cost saving of reducing the battery size is with the model. We also show that the dynamic charging can be beneficial to battery life.