FEAT: Fleet management for efficient and sustainable electric micromobility systems

Research Project, 2022 – 2025

In the past decade, thousands of conventional bike-sharing systems emerged in different parts of the world, and thousands of them ceased operation. The failure is detrimental, leaving piles of abandoned bikes and huge recycling and environmental burdens. The reasons for collapsed systems are complex, like those of the successful ones, but a few barriers are notable, e.g., clampdown policies, hilly terrain, and large carbon footprint. As a therapy, electric micro-mobility system (EmmS) has a number of notable advantages, such as inherently being a green transportation mode, effortless riding, and smaller environmental footprints, all attributed to the compact electric powertrain and rechargeable batteries.

The FEAT project aims to develop efficient and sustainable fleet management strategies for shared electric micromobility systems (EmmS). The goal is to jointly optimize the energy consumption and the level of service of EmmS fleets, by taking into account dynamic energy grid loads, stochastic travel demands, battery energy waste in idle status, and coordination with other transportation modes. The approach is to use advanced machine learning models and state-of-the-art routing algorithms to empower the decision-making of where, when, and how to charge batteries, relocate vehicles, and swap batteries. The results are of great potential to resolve the current chaos in cities that are inundated by e-bikes/e-scooters, and realize a highly accessible, energy-efficient, and complementary operation of EmmS.

This project is funded by the Swedish Energy Agency for two years with a total amount of 2.98 million SEK. Relevant partners include Västtrafik, Swedish Electromobility Centre, SAFER, VOI, and the City of Gothenburg.