Service design in electric vehicle sharing: evidence from Italy

In recent years, the issue of vehicle road sharing has attracted growing attention from both researchers and operators, as a potential instrument to improve the sustainability of urban mobility or transport systems. Beside the general concept, different operational models, managerial and technological solutions have been developed, leading to a high diversification of possible vehicle sharing configurations. This heterogeneity entails a considerable complexity of the service design phase, though few academic contributions tackled this specific problem and most of the papers focused on the dynamics of adoption and use of the service itself. To fill such a gap, this paper aims to present the approach followed in the design phase of an electric vehicle sharing service for the city of Milano. The methodology adopted in this work is based on the idea that a vehicle sharing service needs to be configured to answer to specific mobility needs coherently with the characteristics of target customers. To explain this idea the methodology was articulated into four steps, which are reported in detail in this study: (i) mapping of mobility profiles and service performances, (ii) competitive analysis, (iii) development of the service configurations and (iv) development of the evaluation model.