Optimal selection of sustainable battery supplier for electric vehicle battery swapping station

The problems faced in the electric vehicle (EV) charging station like time consumption and limited space can be overcome by battery swapping station (BSS), which not only saves time but also reduces the range anxiety problem among the users of EV. Batteries are the backbone of EV as it is power supply and essential to run the vehicle. Total price of EV has a good share in the form of battery, thus impacting a lot in the EV industry. Therefore, this paper presents a methodology for the selection of a sustainable battery supplier for BSS using fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making method. Firstly, four main criteria segregated into 12 supplementary criteria are identified considering several requirements for BSS. To cope with the uncertainty in the decision-making process, triangular fuzzy number (TFN) has been implemented. The TFNs give the relative weights among the considered criterion, and to make this framework more customer-centric, quality function deployment (QFD) is implemented, leading to final weights of the criteria. The obtained results give the hierarchy of the criteria, and top five weights after implementing the QFD methodology are as follows: battery price (0.2313), innovation ability (0.2188), safety assurance (0.12135), financial condition (0.1119), and cost of transportation (0.066). Subsequently, integrating fuzzy with complex-proportional assessment of alternatives (COPRAS) leads to rank the alternatives. As a case study, Kolkata city of India is chosen to demonstrate a viable selection. It was found that supplier based on Kolkata Municipal Corporation is the topmost priority, followed by North 24 Parganas, eastern part of Howrah, and South 24 Parganas, with the relative significance value of 0.3305, 0.2575, 0.2540, and 0.1578, respectively. This paper reveals an approach to the stakeholders for accessing the sustainable battery supplier of BSS choosing the most significant one.