A Review on Electric Bus Charging Scheduling from Viewpoints of Vehicle Scheduling

Electric bus based public transportation systems have great potential to mitigate urban traffic congestion caused by increasing growth of urban population and air quality degradation caused by intensively using diesel-based private cars because electric buses operate more efficiently and quietly than diesel buses and contribute significantly to decrease negative impacts on the environment by reducing emissions and noise. However, electric buses suffer from the limited battery range and high charging cost resulting from high charging power demands. Consequently, this poses new challenges for planning and scheduling public electric bus systems because the schedulers need to form reasonable charging strategies to recharge batteries during daily operations so that electric buses become economically viable. This study attempts to provide a new angle to review the latest development of charging scheduling for electric buses from the viewpoints of electric vehicle scheduling problems to facilitate coordination between charging schedules and vehicle scheduling for improving economic attractiveness.