4.6 Article

Flexible Pricing Strategies in Electric Free-Floating Bicycle Sharing

期刊

IEEE ACCESS
卷 9, 期 -, 页码 152972-152983

出版社

IEEE-INST ELECTRICAL ELECTRONICS ENGINEERS INC
DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2021.3127568

关键词

Bicycles; Batteries; Costs; Pricing; Torque; Urban areas; Licenses; Bicycles; electric vehicles; intelligent vehicles; public transportation; hybrid power systems

资金

  1. European Union [756656]

向作者/读者索取更多资源

This paper examines the challenges, opportunities, and solutions of implementing a free-floating bike sharing system based on electric bicycles. It analyzes two approaches to fleet-level energy management and assistance control, comparing fixed price against flexible pricing methods. The study uses simulation to assess operational costs, revenues, and the impact of design and environmental parameters on the system.
Bike sharing is an important tool to reduce congestion and pollution in urban areas. Electrically Power Assisted Bicycles (EPAC's) make cycling possible also for sedentary people. Standard EPAC's are difficultly integrable into a free-floating sharing system because the battery pack requires frequent recharging. This paper studies the challenges, opportunities and solutions of implementing a free-floating bike sharing system based on electric bicycles. The analysis revolves around the charge sustaining paradigm. The idea of charge sustaining leverages the metabolic efficiency gaps to reduce the overall physical effort required without determining a net discharge of the battery. Already validated in private bicycles, the idea needs to be modified and adapted to the challenges of a shared fleet. The paper analyzes two approaches to the fleet level energy management and assistance control of a fleet of charge sustaining bicycles. Specifically, we compare a fixed price approach against a flexible pricing approach where the user can select the cost based on the pedaling effort they are willing to exercise. A simulation framework (calibrated on data collected during a large trial in Milan, Italy) assesses the operational costs and revenues of the two approaches quantifying how they depend on the design and environmental parameters. We provide and validate a lower bound in terms of usage rate that guarantees economic sustainability, additionally showing that a flexible pricing strategy can lower this bound and grant more degrees of freedom to the users.

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