Business System Model of Battery Swapping Management for Transportation Fleet and Energy Storage System

摘要

Electric Express Buses with battery swapping station is a viable business model as they travel long distances and operates on predictable operation routes. Electric vehicles have lower operating cost and battery-swapping strategy could solve the problem of range limitation and long charging time of Lithium batteries. However it requires huge initial investment for extra batteries at depot and long breakeven period. To evaluate system viability of electric express bus business in Malaysia, a system dynamics model is built to model the relationship of stocks, which are the passengers, batteries, buses and swap stations in operation. The model also includes the financial stock in terms of cash flow, book value and net present value to assist the decision making for business growth. The dynamics between operation and finance also modeled in terms of investment delay and financial performance feedback. The simulation also performed What-If analysis to evaluate how the business viability behaves in a dynamic context such as time delay in perceived to invest and size of business expansion. This model can be used to update current scale of the system and to visualize the projected growth. The simulation result can be used to communicate with stakeholders in decision-making process.