Robust Electric Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows under Demand Uncertainty and Weight-Related Energy Consumption

Abstract

Vehicle routing problem with time windows (VRPTW) is a core combinatorial optimization problem in distribution tasks. The electric vehicle routing problem with time windows under demand uncertainty and weight-related energy consumption is an extension of the VRPTW. Although some researchers have studied either the electric VRPTW with nonlinear energy consumption model or the impact of the uncertain customer demand on the conventional vehicles, the literature on the integration of uncertain demand and energy consumption of electric vehicles is still scarce. However, practically, it is usually not feasible to ignore the uncertainty of customer demand and the weight-related energy consumption of electronic vehicles (EVs) in actual operation. Hence, we propose the robust optimization model based on a route-related uncertain set to tackle this problem. Moreover, adaptive large neighbourhood search heuristic has been developed to solve the problem due to the NP-hard nature of the problem. The effectiveness of the method is verified by experiments, and the influence of uncertain demand and uncertain parameters on the solution is further explored.

Keywords

• electric vehicle routing problem
• time windows
• uncertain demand
• energy consumption model
• robust optimization
• adaptive large neighbourhood search