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Title: Analyzing battery electric vehicle feasibility from taxi travel patterns: The case study of New York City, USA

Journal Article · · Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies
 [1]; ORCiD logo [1];  [2];  [3]
  1. Iowa State Univ., Ames, IA (United States). Dept. of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering
  2. Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). National Transportation Research Center
  3. Southeast Univ., Nanjing (China). Development Research Inst. of Transportation Governed by Law
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Electric taxis have the potential to improve urban air quality and save driver’s energy expenditure. Although battery electric vehicles (BEVs) have drawbacks such as the limited range and charging inconvenience, technological progress has been presenting promising potential for electric taxis. Many cities around the world including New York City, USA are taking initiatives to replace gasoline taxis with plug-in electric vehicles. This study extracts ten variables from the trip data of the New York City yellow taxis to represent their spatial-temporal travel patterns in terms of driver-shift, travel demand and dwell, and examines the implications of these driving patterns on the BEV taxi feasibility. The BEV feasibility of a taxi is quantified as the percentage of occupied trips that can be completed by BEVs of a given driving range during a year. It is found that the currently deployed 280 public charging stations in New York City are far from sufficient to support a large BEV taxi fleet. However, adding merely 372 new charging stations at various locations where taxis frequently dwell can potentially make BEVs with 200- and 300-mile ranges feasible for more than half of the taxi fleet. Finally, the results also show that taxis with certain characteristics are more suitable for switching to BEV-200 or BEV-300, such as fewer daily shifts, fewer drivers assigned to the taxi, shorter daily driving distance, fewer daily dwells but longer dwelling time, and higher likelihood to dwell at the borough of Manhattan.

Research Organization:
Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States); Iowa State Univ., Ames, IA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Vehicle Technologies Office (EE-3V); USDOE
Grant/Contract Number:
AC05-00OR22725
OSTI ID:
1474658
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1548903
Journal Information:
Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies, Vol. 87; ISSN 0968-090X
Publisher:
ElsevierCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 52 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Cited By (1)

Experience: Understanding Long-Term Evolving Patterns of Shared Electric Vehicle Networks conference August 2019

Figures / Tables (15)

Fig. 1.(p. 5)figure Fig. 1.
Table 1(p. 6)table Table 1
Table 2(p. 7)table Table 2
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Table 3(p. 10)table Table 3
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Table 4(p. 19)table Table 4
Table 5(p. 19)table Table 5

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Related Subjects

25 ENERGY STORAGE
32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATION
electric taxis
battery electric vehicle (BEV) feasibility
spatial-temporal travel patterns
charging infrastructure
GPS data