A review of the stage-of-the-art charging technologies, placement methodologies, and impacts of electric vehicles

The world population depends highly on fossil fuels, particularly for transportation and power generation. This dependency leads to oil price increases because of the depletion of fossil fuels. Burning of fossil fuels also increases greenhouse gas emissions that are greatly responsible for global warming. Thus, electric vehicles (EVs) are considered one of the premium solutions in the land transportation system because they can significantly reduce the dependency on crude oil and minimize transportation-related carbon dioxide emissions along with other pollutants. This study presents an extensive review of the three key areas of EV research, namely, EV charging technologies, the various impacts of EVs, and optimal EV charging station (CS) placement and sizing. Several technical publications related to EV charging technologies are highlighted, and the performance comparison of different EV technologies is discussed. A review of literature on these key areas reveals an increasing interest in these topics in the last decade, with the impacts of EV on the electric power system and the optimal placement and sizing of CS issues widely investigated. By providing an overview of these areas, this study demonstrates the current issues and challenges of widespread deployment of EVs in the market as well as the future research direction in this field. A total of 185 publications are arranged and appended for quick referencing. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.