Revolutionizing electric vehicle management: spatial computing challenges and opportunities

Hyeonjung Tari Jung, Mingzhou Yang, Matthew Eagon, William F. Northrop

Abstract: Electric vehicles (EVs) have been identified as one of the necessary solutions to reduce the carbon footprint of transportation, a large source of greenhouse gas (GHG). As adoption of EVs and infrastructures to support them grow, formidable hurdles to achieving equitable economic growth and reliable transportation and energy system via effective management of EVs have been discovered. This opens major opportunities and challenges for spatial computing research. Equitable distribution of EV infrastructure in a broad region presents complicated spatial computing challenges with a great social impact. Spatial computing informed adoption and management of EVs will be essential to achieving the maximum carbon reduction through EVs along with a reliable transition to a renewable energy future. On the road, EV drivers may benefit from spatial computing to choose routes that take into account public fast-charging stations as well as energy needs of the route, such as speed, weather (e.g. air-conditioning, heating, and elevation changes). This paper presents open research questions of spatial computing related to EV management.