Placement of Infrastructure for Urban Electromobility: A Sustainable Approach

Over the last few years, electric vehicles (EVs) have turned into viable urban transportation alternatives. Charging infrastructure is an issue, since high investment is needed and there is a lot of demand uncertainty. Seeking to fill gaps in past studies, this investigation proposes a set of procedures to identify the most adequate places for implementing the EV charging infrastructure. In order to identify the most favorable districts for the installation and operation of electric charging infrastructure in Sao Paulo city, the following public available information was considered: the density of points of interest (POIs), distribution of the average monthly per capita income, and number of daily trips made by transportation mode. The current electric vehicle charging network and most important business corridors were additionally taken into account. The investigation shows that districts with the largest demand for charging stations are located in the central area, where the population also exhibits the highest purchasing power. The charging station location process can be applied to other cities, and it is possible to use additional variables to measure social inequality.