Real Time Operation of High-Capacity Electric Vehicle Ridesharing Fleets

We study the feasibility of using electric vehicles in online, high-capacity ridepooling systems. Prior work has shown that online algorithms perform well for centrally-controlled, high-capacity ridepool systems. First, we propose a mixed integer linear program to expand past algorithms on ridepooling to electric vehicles fleets with the objective of scheduling vehicle charging to maintain sufficient fleet sizes at various times of day. Then we show a faster, scalable algorithm with similar performance that is practical for full-scale systems. Our contributions show the importance of having knowledge and estimates of future demand even when operating in the online setting.