Empirical charging behavior of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles
Journal article, 2022

Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) offer greenhouse gas emission reduction in car usage if charged frequently and driven mainly on electricity. However, little is known about the actual charging behavior of PHEV owners. Here, we investigate the daily charging of 10,488 Chevrolet Volt PHEV driven on a total of 4.3 million total driving days in the US and Canada. We propose a new method to detect the frequency of individual charging behavior from the daily utility factor and daily distance travelled. Our results show that no charging overnight occurs typically on 3–7% of the driving days per user and additional charging happens on 20–26% of the driving days. We also analyze the relation between charging frequency and utility factor for different user groups and days. Our results show that the utility factor should not be used as the only measure of environmental performance of PHEVs.

User behavior

PHEV

Charging

Author

Ahmet Mandev

Chalmers, Space, Earth and Environment, Physical Resource Theory

Patrick Plötz

Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft Zur

Frances Sprei

Chalmers, Space, Earth and Environment, Physical Resource Theory

Gil Tal

University of California at Davis

Applied Energy

0306-2619 (ISSN) 18729118 (eISSN)

Vol. 321 119293

Driving Forces

Sustainable development

Areas of Advance

Transport

Subject Categories

Energy Engineering

Materials Chemistry

Environmental Sciences

DOI

10.1016/j.apenergy.2022.119293

More information

Latest update

9/5/2022 2