Electric and gasoline vehicle routing problem, cost optimization and comparison

Electric vehicle routing problem aims to find minimum route distance and minimum cost while using electric vehicles. But charging capacity of electric vehicles is less than that of gasoline vehicles and charging stations are not yet very common. For these reasons, charging capacities and charging station locations should be taken into consideration when using electric vehicles in vehicle routing problems (VRP). This study aims to find minimum route distance and cost for electric vehicles, and compare with gasoline vehicles' results. In this thesis, the optimal routes for a company, which is planned to be established in Ankara, were designed for electric or gasoline vehicles to distribute to potential customers in different regions of Ankara. In order to find minimum cost and route distance, charging stations in Ankara, charging prices, charging time, battery capacities and initial costs were examined and included in the study. VRP models have been constructed with these constraints and compared for many different cases with changing number of customers and locations. Mixed integer linear programming models were used in this thesis. Results of the study showed that electric vehicle cases cost less when compared to gasoline vehicles. It has been concluded that as the number of customers increases and/or the distance between customers increases, the cost advantage of electric vehicles is decreasing due to lack of electric vehicle charging station infrastructure.