Optimal dispatch of electric taxis and price making of charging stations using Stackelberg game

With the popularity of electric vehicles, numerous cities have adopted electric vehicles as a part of taxis system. Compared with traditional fuel taxis, electric taxis (ETs) have to rely on charging stations (CSs) to charge frequently, so that it is possible to use charging behavior to control the actions of ETs. This paper considers the problem of optimizing dispatch of electric taxis and charging stations' prices making. Specifically, based on the electricity price control strategy, electric taxis are guided to suitable charing stations deliberately to match a desired dispatch which could improve service quality or operating efficiency of taxis system. In this paper, a Stackelberg (leader-followers) game model is proposed to describe the optimal dispatch and price-making problems. The existence of Nash equilibrium of this game is analyzed, and a low computational complexity algorithm that is suitable for large scale problem is designed to solve this game. In addition, a practical situation is simulated and the impacts of several parameters are presented.