Optimization Models for Platoon Formation Problem with Charging Capacity

This paper considers a platooning scheduling problem for electric connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) operating on highways with a tree-shaped network with capacitated charging points. The objective is to determine platoons formations and charging schedule that minimize the total energy consumption and total duration of trips, while due times of all vehicles and capacity of all stations are not exceeded. We compare two MILP formulations for this problem; a straight-forward formulation based on detailed scheduling at each time unit, and a stronger formulation, based on pre-calculated possible charging time intervals. Through numerical experiments, we show that the formulation based on charging time intervals is on average 1.47 times faster than the detailed formulation and was able to solve 0.5% more instances.