A Large-Scale Empirical Analysis of Electric Vehicle Us-age and Charging: Operational Demands and Infrastructure Implications

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Abstract As global electric vehicle (EV) adoption accelerates, granular analysis of empirical usage andcharging patterns remains scarce. This study presents a unique large-scale empirical exam-ination of 1.6 million EVs, including a broad array of vehicle types—private, taxi, rental,official, bus, and special purpose vehicle—across seven major Chinese cities with over 854million observations of driving and charging events. Our findings illuminate significant het-erogeneity in EV usage, battery energy, and charging behaviour across vehicle types withnotable city differences. Day-time high-power charging presents high loads on the electric-ity grid across all vehicle types, particularly from service-oriented vehicles, including taxis,rental cars, and buses. The maximum loads also are the highest in the center of the cities. Ourstudy of large-scale EV usage offers critical insights for developing charging infrastructure,managing energy grids, and providing flexibility services, which are pivotal to the evolutionof future transport ecosystems.
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A Large-Scale Empirical Analysis of Electric Vehicle Us-age and Charging: Operational Demands and Infrastructure Implications | Research Square window.SnipcartSettings = { analytics: { enabled: false } }; (function() { var accessVector = localStorage.getItem('access_vector') || ''; window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; if (accessVector) { window.dataLayer.push({ user: { profile: { profileInfo: { snid: accessVector } } } }); } })(); (function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src='https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-K279D39R'); Browse Preprints In Review Journals COVID-19 Preprints AJE Video Bytes Research Tools Research Promotion AJE Professional Editing AJE Rubriq About Preprint Platform In Review Editorial Policies Our Team Advisory Board Help Center Sign In Submit a Preprint Cite Share Download PDF Article A Large-Scale Empirical Analysis of Electric Vehicle Us-age and Charging: Operational Demands and Infrastructure Implications Sonia Yeh, Weipeng Zhan, Yuan Liao, Junjun Deng, Zhenpo Wang This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal. https://doi.org/ 10.21203/rs.3.rs-4693997/v1 This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License Status: Under Review Version 1 posted 11 You are reading this latest preprint version Abstract As global electric vehicle (EV) adoption accelerates, granular analysis of empirical usage andcharging patterns remains scarce. This study presents a unique large-scale empirical exam-ination of 1.6 million EVs, including a broad array of vehicle types—private, taxi, rental,official, bus, and special purpose vehicle—across seven major Chinese cities with over 854million observations of driving and charging events. Our findings illuminate significant het-erogeneity in EV usage, battery energy, and charging behaviour across vehicle types withnotable city differences. Day-time high-power charging presents high loads on the electric-ity grid across all vehicle types, particularly from service-oriented vehicles, including taxis,rental cars, and buses. The maximum loads also are the highest in the center of the cities. Ourstudy of large-scale EV usage offers critical insights for developing charging infrastructure,managing energy grids, and providing flexibility services, which are pivotal to the evolutionof future transport ecosystems. Full Text Additional Declarations No competing interests reported. Supplementary Files ChinaEVnpjSMTSupplementaryInformation.pdf Cite Share Download PDF Status: Under Review Version 1 posted Editorial decision: Revision requested 09 Sep, 2024 Reviews received at journal 09 Sep, 2024 Reviews received at journal 22 Aug, 2024 Reviews received at journal 01 Aug, 2024 Reviewers agreed at journal 27 Jul, 2024 Reviewers agreed at journal 24 Jul, 2024 Reviewers agreed at journal 22 Jul, 2024 Reviewers invited by journal 18 Jul, 2024 Editor assigned by journal 18 Jul, 2024 Submission checks completed at journal 17 Jul, 2024 First submitted to journal 05 Jul, 2024 You are reading this latest preprint version Research Square lets you share your work early, gain feedback from the community, and start making changes to your manuscript prior to peer review in a journal. As a division of Research Square Company, we’re committed to making research communication faster, fairer, and more useful. We do this by developing innovative software and high quality services for the global research community. Our growing team is made up of researchers and industry professionals working together to solve the most critical problems facing scientific publishing. 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