Designing a Peer-to-Peer Sharing Service as Fuel for the Development of the Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure

The general public and politics discuss electric vehicles (EVs) as promising means for achieving clean, carbon-free, and sustainable individual transportation. However, an insufficient charging infrastructure hampers a rapid diffusion of EVs. At the same time, investors have refrained from developing an EV-charging infrastructure on a large scale because of the limited demand for EVs. Against this backdrop, peer-to-peer (P2P) sharing and collaborative consumption (SCC) is a promising strategy with which to address this problem. This article describes the concept of an IT-based P2P SCC service and the research activities needed for its design. We do so by introducing a novel application of the sharing economy. Our primary contribution is to take a step toward finding a solution for a problem in the EV domain that is relevant for society. A second contribution lies in the introduction and discussion of predominantly infrastructure-creating (PIC) P2P SCC services and their characteristics.