Locating battery charging stations to facilitate almost shortest paths

• Published in: Discrete Applied Mathematics Vol. 254; pp. 10 - 16
• Main Authors: Arkin, Esther M., Carmi, Paz, Katz, Matthew J., Mitchell, Joseph S.B., Segal, Michael
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Amsterdam Elsevier B.V 15.02.2019; Elsevier BV
• Subjects: Algorithms; Approximation algorithms; Automobile rentals; Battery chargers; Business travel; Charging; Electric vehicles; Operations research; Optimization; Shortest paths; Shortest-path problems; Site selection; Spanners; Stations; Spanners; Approximation algorithms; Shortest paths; Optimization
• ISSN: 0166-218X; 1872-6771
• DOI: 10.1016/j.dam.2018.07.019

We study a facility location problem motivated by requirements pertaining to the distribution of charging stations for electric vehicles: Place a minimum number of battery charging stations at a subset of nodes of a network, so that battery-powered electric vehicles will be able to move between destinations using “t-spanning” routes, of lengths within a factor t>1 of the length of a shortest path, while having sufficient charging stations along the way. We give constant-factor approximation algorithms for minimizing the number of charging stations, subject to the t-spanning constraint. We study two versions of the problem, one in which the stations are required to support a single ride (to a single destination), and one in which the stations are to support multiple rides through a sequence of destinations, where the destinations are revealed one at a time.