Abstract:

New mobility services based on the sharing economy are emerging. New mobility solutions must address the challenges of urban development, requiring smart, safe, dynamic and flexible transport alternatives, in order to be regarded as valid alternatives to the existing common means of transport. In this context, one potential promising solution is “Shared Autonomous Vehicle Services” (SAVS). However, the problem of insufficient vehicle distribution has stood as a barrier to growth in the vehicle sharing service economy. Given this, it is not surprising to find a constantly growing body of research on vehicle relocation in carsharing, resulting in new and improved vehicle relocation strategies and information system solutions. However, the upcoming SAVs currently lack such extensive research trends, even though this transportation medium can also suffer from insufficient vehicle distribution. In order to address this research gap, this study examines and adapts existing carsharing relocation strategies for shared autonomous vehicle services. The authors show that adapting carsharing relocation strategies provides opportunities for optimised service quality of future shared autonomous vehicle services through a discrete event simulation. The presented research suggests that carsharing providers can expand their service in the near future by adopting ADVs and can use carsharing vehicle relocation strategies to do so.