The joint ride-sourcing market equilibrium and charging choice equilibrium with charging sharing

The scarcity of charging facilities remains one of the primary obstacles to the advancement of electric vehicles. Particularly, in ride-sourcing markets, drivers of ride-sourcing electric vehicles (REVs) often spend excessive time searching for an unoccupied public charging pile, leading to reduced customer service efficiency and lower long-term driver profits. To mitigate the inefficiencies caused by searching for limited public charging piles, this study introduces a charging-sharing scheme embedded within the ride-sourcing platform. In this scheme, the ride-sourcing platform operator rents idle private charging piles, located in residences, communities, companies, and industrial parks, and makes them available for reservation through the online platform. Under this integrated system, REV drivers can either reserve shared private charging piles via the online platform or search for available public charging piles. We model the complex interactions between ride-sourcing services and the charging pile choice as a joint ride-sourcing market equilibrium and charging choice equilibrium under the steady state. We prove the existence and uniqueness of the joint equilibrium and analytically investigate the impact of the charging-sharing pricing strategy on both charging choices and market outcomes. We identify conditions under which system performance, measured by the number of REVs in service, customer demand, and customer waiting time, is optimized. Furthermore, we determine the optimal pricing strategy to maximize either platform profit or total social welfare. Notably, profit-maximizing strategies can lead to a Win-Win-Win-Win outcome for drivers, customers, charging pile sharers, and the platform operator. Numerical results demonstrate that when public charging infrastructure is limited, intense competition for charging piles significantly reduces service capacity and customer satisfaction. Introducing the charging-sharing scheme substantially increases the number of REVs in service, boosts customer demand, and shortens customer waiting times. Moreover, pricing strategies play a crucial role in influencing equilibrium outcomes, enhancing platform profitability, and improving overall social welfare.