Feasibility of completely electrified two-way car sharing

Car sharing is a more sustainable approach to personal mobility than vehicle ownership, especially if car sharing services electrify their fleets. However, due to the limited range and slow charging process of electric vehicles, car sharing providers might face problems keeping the vehicles adequately charged. This paper analyzes 4.5 years of real booking data from a German two-way car sharing provider. The dataset includes information on the booking time window, driven distance, and location. We use this data to study the customer behavior and simulate the past operation with a completely electrified fleet. Based on the simulation, we determine whether charging problems exist and how they can be solved by adapting the charging rate, battery capacity, and number of charging points. Our results indicate that the operation of the service with modern electric vehicles is entirely feasible. Per car sharing station, two charging points are sufficient if vehicles do not have to be connected immediately upon arrival (by the customer), but can connect later once another vehicle has finished charging. Somewhat problematic is that 4% of the bookings have a longer driven distance than the vehicle's range. In these cases, the disutility to customers is unclear but, in all likelihood, manageable. Furthermore, we find that 50% of the charging events can be shifted by more than 10h, indicating significant flexibility that could be utilized for smart charging and the provision of ancillary services in the future.