An agent-based electric vehicle ecosystem model: San Francisco case study

• The development of an agent-based EV model that comprises both EV adoption and usage.
• Actualization of the model based on survey and environmental data from San Francisco, CA.
• ‘What-if’ analysis of several policy and technology changes on EV adoption and usage in San Francisco.

The widespread commercial availability of plug-in electric vehicles (EVs) in recent years motivates policies to encourage EV adoption and infrastructure to cope with the increasing number of EVs. We present an agent-based EV ecosystem model that incorporates EV adoption and usage with spatial and temporal considerations and that can aid different EV industry stakeholders such as policymakers, utility operators, charging station planners, and EV manufacturers. The model follows an ecological modeling approach, and is used to determine how different policies and battery technologies affect EV adoption, EV charging, and charging station activity. We choose model parameters to fit San Francisco as a test city and simulate different scenarios. The results provide insight on potential changes to the San Francisco EV ecosystem as a result of changes in rebates, availability of workplace charging, public awareness of lower EV operational costs, and denser EV batteries. We find that our results match those obtained using other approaches and that the compact geographical size of San Francisco and its relative wealth make it an ideal city for EV adoption.