Combining Ad Hoc Text Mining and Descriptive Analytics to Investigate Public EV Charging Prices in the United States

Electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure is present all over the United States, but charging prices vary greatly, both in amount and in the methods by which they are assessed. For this paper, we interpret and analyze charging price information from PlugShare, a crowd-sourced EV charging data platform. Because prices in these data exist in a semi-structured textual format, an ad hoc text mining approach is used to extract quantitative price information. Descriptive analytics of the processed dataset demonstrate how the prices of EV charging vary with charging level (Direct Current Fast Charging versus Level 2), geographic location, network provider, and location type. Our research indicates that a great deal of diversity and flexibility exists in structuring the prices of EV charging to enable incentives for shaping charging behaviors, but that it has yet to be widely standardized or utilized. Comparisons with estimates of the levelized cost of EV charging illustrate some of the challenges associated with operating and using these stations.

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