Inventory Policy for Electric Vehicle Battery Swapping Stations in Beijing

Abstract

Aiming at tackling the inventory problems caused by the insufficient power supply in Beijing, the difficulty of matching supply and demand, and the high volatility of demand, this paper proposes a novel inventory policy for Beijing's battery swapping stations under a certain level of service. As Beijing is actively promoting the standardization of battery swapping stations, batteries can be shared among battery swapping stations belonging to different enterprises, which lays a solid foundation for lateral transshipment between battery swapping stations in Beijing. Based on demand forecasting, lateral transshipment is incorporated into the traditional inventory management model, and a novel inventory management model for Beijing’s battery swapping stations is constructed. The results show that (1) based on the widest network of battery swapping stations in China and the large number of transferable batteries, lateral transshipment can help to reduce the inventory cost of battery swapping stations and facilitate economic efficiency; (2) transshipment quantity is negatively correlated with the congestion index and positively correlated with the out-of-stock cost; (3) transshipment cost imposes the greatest influence on the total cost of battery swapping stations under the lateral transshipment mode. This study breaks the traditional independent operation mode of Beijing's battery swapping stations by introducing the concept of sharing in the context of Beijing's active promotion of the standardization of battery swapping stations. In addition, it provides new methods for inventory management in Beijing's battery swapping stations.