Rethinking Public Charging Infrastructure: Behavioral, Systemic, and Community Implications of the EV Transition

Abstract:  

As electric vehicles (EVs) gain a rapidly growing share of new sales, cities face a rare chance and responsibility to plan and scale a new layer of transportation infrastructure to support EV operations at scale. Specifically, public charging infrastructure (PCI) is being rolled out alongside EV adoption into a well-established road infrastructure system, creating an unusually responsive context to learn and adapt using emerging data.

This talk examines how PCI is reshaping interactions among travelers, infrastructure, and communities, given its dual role at the intersection of mobility and energy systems. The presentation is organized around three questions: (1) how road users actually utilize PCI; (2) how those choices propagate through traffic patterns, reliability, and system efficiency; and (3) how PCI deployment could affect transportation system and community dynamics.

By examining multiple large-scale, real-world datasets (electric taxi trajectories, personal EV charging logs, residents’ visitation patterns, and activity-location traces), I highlight what distinguishes PCI from most civil infrastructures: its strong dependence on behavioral routines, social exposure, and urban activity patterns.

I will discuss where conventional planning tools often struggle to represent these dynamics, introduce modeling approaches that embed realistic preferences and habits, and discuss conditions under which expanding PCI can unintentionally reduce network efficiency or exacerbate disparities. I close with policy and research directions for building an accessible, resilient, and human-centered charging ecosystem.

Bio:

Dr. Qian is an assistant professor in Civil Engineering at Rice University. Before Rice, he served as an assistant professor and Hewson Faculty Fellow at the University of Alabama from 2020 to 2024. His areas of specialization include mathematical modeling and data-driven methods for transportation problems, focusing on transportation electrification, public transportation, and shared mobility applications. He has published over 60 journal and conference papers in esteemed journals and conferences. He completed his M.S.E (2014) and Ph.D. (2018) in Civil Engineering from Purdue University, where he investigated the transmission of infectious diseases in transportation systems for his Ph.D. dissertation.