Application of an Improved Harmony Search Algorithm on Electric Vehicle Routing Problems

Vanny Minanda, Yun-Chia Liang (), Angela H. L. Chen and Aldy Gunawan
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Vanny Minanda: Department of Industrial Engineering and Management, Yuan Ze University, Taoyuan 320, Taiwan
Yun-Chia Liang: Department of Industrial Engineering and Management, Yuan Ze University, Taoyuan 320, Taiwan
Angela H. L. Chen: Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Chung Yuan Christian University, Taoyuan 320, Taiwan
Aldy Gunawan: School of Computing and Information Systems, Singapore Management University, 80 Stamford Road, Singapore 178902, Singapore

Energies, 2024, vol. 17, issue 15, 1-22

Abstract: Electric vehicles (EVs) have gained considerable popularity, driven in part by an increased concern for the impact of automobile emissions on climate change. Electric vehicles (EVs) cover more than just conventional cars and trucks. They also include electric motorcycles, such as those produced by Gogoro, which serve as the primary mode of transportation for food and package delivery services in Taiwan. Consequently, the Electric Vehicle Routing Problem (EVRP) has emerged as an important variation of the Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem (CVRP). In addition to the CVRP’s constraints, the EVRP requires vehicles to visit a charging station before the battery level is insufficient to continue service. EV battery consumption is linearly correlated to their weight. These additional constraints make the EVRP more challenging than the conventional CVRP. This study proposes an improved Harmony Search Algorithm (HSA), with performance validated by testing 24 available benchmark instances in the EVRP. This study also proposes a novel update mechanism in the improvement stage and a strategy to improve the routes with charging stations. The results show that in small and large instances, the proposed HSA improved the number of trips to the charging stations by 24% and 4.5%, respectively. These results were also verified using the Wilcoxon signed-rank significant test.

Keywords: vehicle routing problem; metaheuristic; electric vehicle routing problem; harmony search algorithm (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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