A hybrid metaheuristic algorithm to solve the electric vehicle routing problem with battery recharging stations for sustainable environmental and energy optimization
Résumé
Air pollution due to the usage of combustion vehicles, the increase in oil costs, and its exhaustion make it necessary to replace traditional vehicles with electrically powered cars. Zero-emission vehicles and Electric Vehicles (EVs) are critical technologies to attain deep reductions in greenhouse gases from transportation. Researchers are becoming progressively concerned about the destruction it is producing to the environment, and EVs are identified to play a part in equalizing the balance. In the Capacitated Electric Vehicle Routing Problem (CE-VRP), the vehicles have a limited delivery capacity and rely completely on their limited battery capacity. Besides, all vehicle has a limited driving range and must recharge their battery at some customer’s locations. In this paper, a “Hybrid Variable Neighbourhood Search (HVNS)” is proposed to solve the CE-VRP. The results provide indications on the ideal size of the fleet, and on the total distance traveled while minimizing the associated costs. The computational results on the reference cases confirm that the HVNS can detect good quality solutions compared to previous work, an increase in total associated cost for the majority of the instances given, this proves that the HVNS algorithm is suitable to solve the CE-VRP with a recharging station.