Optimizing consolidated shared charging and electric ride-sourcing services

The shortage of charging facilities under the trend of transportation electrification brings a significant challenge to electric ride-sourcing operations. As a component of sharing economy, flourishing shared charging consolidates idle charging resources, providing a promising solution to this problem. We propose a shared charging program where the ride-sourcing platform acts as an intermediary and rents shareable charging posts from private post owners to facilitate the charging demand of ride-sourcing drivers. A utility-based modeling framework is established to dissect the intricate behavioral interactions among post owners, drivers, and riders. The analytical results reveal that supply and demand monotonicity with respect to shared charging fee and commission rate varies with different returns to scale of riders' waiting time functions. Then, we mathematically derive the first-order optimality solutions of the joint decisions on shared charging (i.e., rental fee, and charging fee) and ride-sourcing (i.e., commission rate, and price) sectors under monopoly optimality and social optimality, respectively. The platform can adopt a relatively high shared charging fee and low rental fee to gain more profit when the rider demand is insensitive to the commission rate. If the government focuses more on the private post owner surplus, it should ensure relatively high price elasticity under optimal pricing to better protect their welfare. Finally, we numerically discuss how potential shared charging posts impact the market states and compare the outcomes between ride-sourcing-only and shared charging programs. It is found that the shared charging service improves the platform profit, social welfare, rider surplus, and driver surplus, while inducing higher commission rates and prices. The economic analysis gains insights into shared charging for electric ride-sourcing services and highlights the potential of sharing solutions in promoting sustainable urban mobility services.