Optimal vehicle fleet planning and collaboration under carbon neutrality: a game-theoretic perspective

This paper studies the optimal vehicle fleet planning and collaboration problem for two transport service providers and a carbon emission treatment agency under carbon neutrality. One is a provider of transport services deploying commercial electric vehicles (CEVs), and the other is a provider of transport services using fuel vehicles (FVs). Our work is motivated by the recent global emphasis on carbon neutrality. The FV transport service provider pays a fixed fee or a portion of its sales revenue to a carbon emission treatment agency in exchange for technology to reduce its carbon emissions. We formulate a game-theoretic framework among the two transport service providers and a carbon emission treatment agency, in which the FV transport provider can adopt three strategies (i.e., no emission reduction (S1), purchasing technology for emission reduction (S2), and entrusting a carbon emission treatment agency (S3)), resulting in three potential game scenarios. We derive each party’s optimal fleet size, price, and profit in the three scenarios. Furthermore, we expand the model for a company with a blended fleet of CEVs and FVs, and explore the effect of consumer green preference and the purchase cost per CEV on this company’s strategy selection. Our results suggest that carbon emission reduction strategies may improve the market performance of the FV transport service provider. Then, we find no certain strategy is always preferable to another: the optimal cooperation strategy between the transport service provider and carbon emission treatment agency depends on the fixed technology fee, ratio of revenue sharing, government penalty, the transport service market potential, and consumer green preference, as well as the cost per CEV. When the market potential is large enough the carbon emission treatment agency should cooperate with the FV transport service provider through strategy S3. This paper gives the transport service provider and carbon emission treatment agency a full picture of whether, when, and how to collaborate in green commerce.