UCLA

The electric vehicle industry has been growing lately, and recent efforts by governments around the world pushing for a more clean and sustainable form of transportation strongly suggests this trend to continue. Critical to sustaining electric vehicle commuting is a well running and coordinated electric charger station infrastructure that meets the charging demand consumers need. As the conversion to electric vehicles grows, vehicle charger stations become more essential in their charging delivery and must have availability to build consumer confidence in their greater adoption. Using real vehicle charging activity data, this study investigates factors that cause the charger stations to become unavailable for consumers. Aspatial approach via semivariogram analysis and kriging reveals that some geo correlation is present among unavailability indicators, although stronger findings are needed to affirm a decisive conclusion. Then, Weibull modeling is applied to understand a charging station’s survival rate and the attributes that contribute to its longevity and fragility.