Electric vehicle routing problem with time windows, recharging stations and battery swapping stations

Due to new environmental measures and targets for reducing emissions, many logistics companies have started adopting electric vehicles in their fleet for cargo delivery. They are increasingly becoming popular for last mile deliveries. However, due to their limited range, they require frequent visits to recharging stations while delivering products to customers along their route. Long recharging times at available stations can have an adverse impact on route planning especially when short delivery time windows are considered. Battery swapping has the potential to reduce recharging times by replacing the vehicles' batteries with fully charged batteries. However, each battery swap is expensive than traditional recharging methods. In this paper, we present a variant of the Electric Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows and Recharging Stations by allowing the available stations to serve both as Recharging Stations (RSs) and Battery Swapping Stations (BSSs). To the best of our knowledge, this problem has not been previously addressed in the literature. A model and algorithm for this problem are presented, computational experiments are performed and insights regarding when consideration of BSSs are particularly useful are provided.