A third‐party platoon coordination service: Pricing under government subsidies

Abstract

This paper models a platooning system consisting of trucks and a third‐party service provider (TPSP), which performs platoon coordination, distributes the platooning profit in platoons, and charges trucks in exchange for the services. Government subsidies used to incentivize platooning are also considered. We propose a pricing rule for the TPSP, which keeps part of the platooning profit including the subsidy each time a platoon is formed. In addition, a platoon coordination solution based on the distributed model predictive control (MPC) is proposed, in which the pricing rule under government subsidies is integrated. We perform a realistic simulation over the Swedish road network to evaluate the impact of the pricing rule and subsidies on the achieved profits and fuel savings. Our results show that subsidies are an effective mean to boost fuel savings from platooning. Moreover, the simulation study indicates that high pricing corresponds to a low platooning rate of the system, as trucks' incentives for platooning decrease.

Large-Scale Multi-Fleet Platoon Coordination: A Dynamic Programming Approach

“…By coordination, trucks are able to merge into platoons en routes by adjusting, for example, their transport paths [10], [11], velocities traveling on common route sections [12], [13], [14], and velocities when entering the neighborhood driving area of other trucks [15]. Some studies consider the hub-based platoon coordination (i.e., platoons are formed only at hubs) [16], [17], [18], [19], where trucks schedule their waiting and departure times at hubs along their routes to maximize the platooning profit. To date, most of the literature on platoon coordination strategies has focused on vehicles owned by individual owners or the same fleet, referred to as single-vehicle and single-fleet platooning, respectively.…”