A comparative study of en route refuelling behaviours of conventional and electric vehicles in Beijing, China

A comparative study is carried out to investigate the differences among conventional vehicles (CVs), battery electric vehicles (BEVs) and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) in the maximum acceptable time of diverting to a refuelling station, maximum acceptable time of queueing at a refuelling station, refuelling modes and desirable electric driving ranges, using Beijing, China, as a case study. Here, several multinomial logit (MNL) models are developed to relate the diverting and waiting times to individual attributes. The results suggest that, (1) the diverting time roughly follows a normal distribution for both CVs and electric vehicles (EVs), but the difference between them is slight; (2) EVs tend to bear longer waiting time above 10 min; (3) the MNL models indicate that income and the level of education tend to be more statistically significant to both the diverting and waiting times; (4) the most preferred driving ranges obtained for BEVs and PHEVs are both around 50 km, indicating that EV drivers may just prefer to charge for a specific time ranging from 8 to 10 min. Finally, ways to apply the empirical findings in planning refuelling and charging stations are discussed with specific examples.