Principal Investigator Kent Larson
Project Website http://www.media.mit.edu/projects/fleet-simulation/overview/
How do we forecast the supply of fleets to meet the emerging travel demand and service needs in cities?
The critical mass and availability of vehicles is one critical factor behind successful shared-use mobility services. Achieving scale often requires large capital investment. Under-supplying the fleet would result in low service availability and in user dissatisfaction; over-supplying, on the other hand, results in inefficient use of capital. Proper management of the supply-demand dynamics is therefore paramount in the achieving viability for a new mobility service.
In addition, as a new shared mobility platform diversifies its service across both passenger and freight delivery, its required scale of operation and investment becomes more difficult to estimate.
In this research of fleet deployment and optimization, the City Science group aims to create an accessible simulation tool to enable cities to forecast the size of deployment of new shared mobility services, using the Persuasive Electric Vehicle to deliver passengers and packages as an initial test case. The simulation tool also provides a platform for testing fleet rebalancing and service hub strategies.