A Branch-and-Cut-and-Price Algorithm for the Electric Vehicle Routing Problem with Multiple Technologies

Abstract

We provide an exact optimization algorithm for the electric vehicle routing problem with multiple recharge technologies. Our branch-and-cut-and-price algorithm relies upon a path-based formulation, where each column in the master problem represents a sequence of customer visits between two recharge stations instead of a whole route. This allows for massive decomposition, and parallel implementation of the pricing phase, exploiting the large number of independent pricing sub-problems. The algorithm could solve instances with up to thirty customers, nine recharge stations, five vehicles and three technologies to proven optimality. Near-optimal heuristic solutions were obtained with a general-purpose MIP solver from the columns generated at the root node.