Electric Vehicles and the Use of Demand Projection Models: A Systematic Mapping of Studies

In today’s world, electric vehicles have become a real solution to the problem of pollution caused by petrol and diesel-powered vehicles. However, incorporating them successfully into the global vehicle park poses new challenges. Some of these challenges have to do with meeting the electricity demand, providing the physical installations for charging, and the size and capacity of the electric grid required to deliver the necessary supply. Solving these new problems requires determining or projecting the electrical and/or physical requirements involved, but there is no single model or methodology to do this, nor any single document which summarizes the existing information. To address this situation, this work presents the result of a systematic mapping study that seeks to provide organized information about the (mathematical) models for the demand arising from electric vehicles, as well as to answer a series of questions posed for this research. The results obtained show that there is a wide variety of models used to determine demand requirements –of either physical or electrical elements– in which mathematical modelling and operations research tools are normally used. Other results indicate that demand models are mainly focused on the electrical requirements rather than on physical ones, and that, in most cases, the type of vehicle for which the demand is studied is not mentioned.