Energy Management of Electric Truck Fleet Considering Cargo Load, Platooning, and Charging

Heavy-duty trucks are currently contributing to a significant portion of greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector. Electrification of heavy-duty vehicle fleet can potentially reduce the energy consumption for freight delivery due to high powertrain efficiency. However, the high cost of vehicles due to large battery size and range anxiety due to limited charging infrastructures are considered as the main barriers for adoption. The main objective of this paper is to design a comprehensive platoon management framework for an electric truck fleet which incorporates cargo allocation, platooning sequence change, and charging time coordination. Three planning problems are formulated in this paper for different phases of freight delivery by electric truck fleets and analytical solutions are offered for each scenario. Linear programming was used as a backup method when analytical solutions are infeasible. Numerical results demonstrated that the proposed solutions could potentially reduce the energy consumption or charging time for an electric truck fleet.