Capacitated Optimization Problems for Taxi vs. Uber Platforms with Gasoline vs. Electric Fleets

Abstract

Taxi platforms are interested in deploying electric fleets for operational benefits compared to gasoline fleets. At the same time, Uber and any other Uber-like online mobile platforms are emerging to match riders with drivers. They are also excited to deploy electric fleets for ride service. While electric fleets are less expensive to operate, they are more expensive to acquire, and besides, they have less capacity than gasoline fleets in terms of ride service due to long time to charge their batteries. In this talk, we study which platform is more favorable to deploy electric vehicles.