City readiness system assessment of electric vehicle charging infrastructure

The development of charging infrastructure not only affects the operating results of electric vehicles in demonstration cities, but also affects the purchase and use behavior of users. Based on literature and summary reports of demonstration cities, an assessment indicator system of 4 major factors and 13 observation indicators is developed on city readiness of charging infrastructure. By combining the advantages of partial least squares (PLS) path model, technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) model and cluster model, a comprehensive city readiness assessment of charging infrastructure is made based on the empirical research of 25 demonstration cities in China. The results indicate that, some cities are doing better in the four areas of policy support and investment, charging infrastructure layout and planning, operation scope and effect, operation service and security. There are 6 indicators of the quantity of charging piles, quantity of cumulative charging times, vehicle types in service, quantity of cumulative charge for electricity, quantity of training people and total investment that have greater impacts on city readiness. The demonstration cities need to take the above factors and indicators into consideration when making policies to promote the development of charging infrastructure.