This project began with a literature review of previous research papers that have investigated the topic of implementing new EV charging stations using a variety of different methods.

Psychology of EV use

First I reviewed several studies regarding the psychology around the purchase and use of EVs. Papers such as:

• Experiencing range in an electric vehicle: Understanding psychological barriers (Thomas, et al., 2012)
• What drives range preferences in electric vehicle users? (Thomas & Krems, 2013)
• The investigation of the major factors influencing plug-in electric vehicle driving patterns and charging behaviour (Elham et al., 2015)

These paper gave me an insight into the barriers to purchasing an EV. From surveys, it has been commonly found that the most significant barrier to purchasing an EV is concerns about the range (which is the maximum distance that EVs can travel before running out of charge). The concept of range anxiety explains this concern: “the fear that the vehicle has insufficient range to reach the destination” (Jing & liu, 2014). One way to combat range anxiety is through the development of public charging infrastructure.

During my review of psychology papers, I also learned that EV drivers rarely drive to the maximum range of their vehicles, due to this fear. According to my literature review, the average preferred maximum distance for a trip is around 160km. Drivers rarely plan trips that are longer than that range, even though their vehicle may go further than 200km total.

Mathematical analysis

Several studies have been based in mathematical modelling approaches, such as:

• flow-capture (Kuby et al., 2009)
• p-median (Nicholas et al., 2004; Lin et al., 2008)
• set covering (Wang & Lin, 2009; Frade et al., 2011)
• agent-based (Sweda & Klabjan, 2011)

These papers occasionally also employed the use of some sort of GIS technology to aid their analysis or visually display their findings. For the scope of my project and with my limited knowledge of sophisticated mathematical modelling, I did not chose to base my project off any of these approaches. However, I did take into consideration the variables that they used, any limitations they faced, and preliminary research they conducted.

GIS analysis

Many studies alternatively used GIS technology for their analysis, using techniques such as:

• Weighted overlay analysis (Cavedies et al., n.d.)
• Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Methods (Guler & Yomralioglu, 2018)

During my research I also found many papers that employed GIS technology that were unfortunately in Chinese, and therefore I could only read their abstracts if they were available in English.

Since these GIS approaches used methods that I am much more familiar with, compared to the mathematical approaches, I decided to a methodology similar to them, specifically a Multi-Criteria Evaluation.