Charging Compared

Evidence map

Charging price: what the evidence base looks like

12 publications, 0 of them trials and 0 syntheses. This page describes the shape of that literature rather than summarising its conclusions.

Updated 4 min read 12 citations

Wall-mounted charger on a house wall with a cable running to a small electric car
A private wallbox at a house in Wuppertal, charging a Seat Mii Electric. Fährtenleser · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
What the evidence on charging price is made of Of 12 publications on this topic, the breakdown by study type: 12 other. 12other (12)
12 publications, by study type. Volume is not strength — the same count can be a settled question or a pile of commentary, and which one it is depends almost entirely on this breakdown. Harvested from PubMed and Crossref; publication type as recorded by the source.

What this literature is made of

A reasonable volume of literature, but weighted towards reviews and observational work rather than trials. That is enough to describe a phenomenon and rarely enough to establish that an intervention works.

The distinction that matters most is between synthesis and primary research. A meta-analysis pools trials and is the closest thing to a settled answer a field produces. A narrative review is one group's reading of the same material and can be selective without being dishonest. Counting them together, which most citation counts do, obscures exactly the thing you want to know.

When the charging price literature was published Publication years for the 12 papers on this topic, grouped into bands from before 2015 through to 2023 onwards. 2023 onwards7 papers2020-20223 papers2015-20192 papers
Still active. The most recent paper here is from 2025, so this is a field where an answer written today may not hold for long. Publication years as recorded by PubMed and Crossref.

How this page is built

Everything above is computed from the citations this site harvested from PubMed and Crossref, not written by hand. When the weekly harvest finds a new paper on this topic, these counts change and the characterisation changes with them. That is the point: a hand-written claim about how strong an evidence base is starts decaying the day it is written.

Publication type is taken as the source records it. That is imperfect — journals label inconsistently, and a paper indexed as a "review" may be a systematic one — so treat the bands as approximate. They are accurate enough to distinguish a trial literature from a commentary literature, which is the distinction that matters.

Charging post on a paved verge in a Dutch village, with houses behind
Donald Trung Quoc Don (Chữ Hán: 徵國單) - Wikimedia Commons.… · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

The strongest work on this topic

Ordered by study design first, then recency. The full set is listed in the references below.

  1. Dynamic Pricing for Electric Vehicle Charging—A Literature Review — Limmer S, 2019, journal article
  2. Optimal Scheduling of Plug-in Electric Vehicle Charging Including Time-of-Use Tariff to Minimize Cost and System Stress — Suyono H, Rahman M, Mokhlis H et al., 2019, journal article
  3. User Cost Minimization and Load Balancing for Multiple Electric Vehicle Charging Stations Based on Deep Reinforcement Learning — Xia Y, Cheng Z, Zhang J et al., 2025, journal article
  4. Forecasting Infrastructure Needs, Environmental Impacts, and Dynamic Pricing for Electric Vehicle Charging — Jabr O, Ayaz F, Nekovee M et al., 2025, journal article
  5. Dynamic Tariff Adjustment for Electric Vehicle Charging in Renewable-Rich Smart Grids: A Multi-Factor Optimization Approach to Load Balancing and Cost Efficiency — Wang D, Chen X, Liu X et al., 2025, journal article
  6. Cost-Optimal Aggregated Electric Vehicle Flexibility for Demand Response Market Participation by Workplace Electric Vehicle Charging Aggregators — Chen Y, Zeng W, Khurram A et al., 2024, journal article
  7. A Generative AI Approach to Pricing Mechanisms and Consumer Behavior in the Electric Vehicle Charging Market — Chaturvedi S, Chen E, Sharma I et al., 2024, journal article
  8. Design of Three Electric Vehicle Charging Tariff Systems to Improve Photovoltaic Self-Consumption — Etxegarai G, Camblong H, Ezeiza A et al., 2024, journal article
  9. Optimal number of charging station and pricing strategy for the electric vehicle with component commonality considering consumer range anxiety — Yu W, Zhang L, Lu R et al., 2023, journal article
  10. Electric Vehicle Charging Scheduling and Pricing Based on Stackelberg Game — Xiong Q, Zhang Z, Bazhanov A et al., 2022, journal article
How much research is there on charging price?
12 publications are indexed here, of which 0 are trials and 0 are syntheses.
Does more research mean a stronger conclusion?
No. Composition matters more than volume — five randomised trials support a claim far better than fifty commentaries, and citation counts do not distinguish between them.
How current is this?
The most recent paper indexed here is from 2025. The set is refreshed weekly from PubMed and Crossref.
Why does this page not tell me the answer?
Because summarising a literature into a conclusion requires reading it, and doing that automatically is how confident nonsense gets published. This page tells you how much weight a conclusion could bear; the articles on this site do the interpreting.

References

Every citation below links to the original peer-reviewed record on PubMed or via DOI. Nothing here is a substitute for medical advice.

  1. Optimal Scheduling of Plug-in Electric Vehicle Charging Including Time-of-Use Tariff to Minimize Cost and System Stress Suyono H, Rahman M, Mokhlis H, et al. · Energies · 2019 · Journal article DOI
  2. Dynamic Pricing for Electric Vehicle Charging—A Literature Review Limmer S · Energies · 2019 · Journal article DOI
  3. Dynamic Tariff Adjustment for Electric Vehicle Charging in Renewable-Rich Smart Grids: A Multi-Factor Optimization Approach to Load Balancing and Cost Efficiency Wang D, Chen X, Liu X, et al. · Energies · 2025 · Journal article DOI
  4. User Cost Minimization and Load Balancing for Multiple Electric Vehicle Charging Stations Based on Deep Reinforcement Learning Xia Y, Cheng Z, Zhang J, et al. · World Electric Vehicle Journal · 2025 · Journal article DOI
  5. Forecasting Infrastructure Needs, Environmental Impacts, and Dynamic Pricing for Electric Vehicle Charging Jabr O, Ayaz F, Nekovee M, et al. · World Electric Vehicle Journal · 2025 · Journal article DOI
  6. A Generative AI Approach to Pricing Mechanisms and Consumer Behavior in the Electric Vehicle Charging Market Chaturvedi S, Chen E, Sharma I, et al. · Proceedings of the AAAI Symposium Series · 2024 · Journal article DOI
  7. Cost-Optimal Aggregated Electric Vehicle Flexibility for Demand Response Market Participation by Workplace Electric Vehicle Charging Aggregators Chen Y, Zeng W, Khurram A, et al. · Energies · 2024 · Journal article DOI
  8. Design of Three Electric Vehicle Charging Tariff Systems to Improve Photovoltaic Self-Consumption Etxegarai G, Camblong H, Ezeiza A, et al. · Energies · 2024 · Journal article DOI
  9. Optimal number of charging station and pricing strategy for the electric vehicle with component commonality considering consumer range anxiety Yu W, Zhang L, Lu R, et al. · PLOS ONE · 2023 · Journal article DOI
  10. Electric Vehicle Charging Scheduling and Pricing Based on Stackelberg Game Xiong Q, Zhang Z, Bazhanov A, et al. · Bulletin of Science and Practice · 2022 · Journal article DOI
  11. Pole-Mounted Electric Vehicle Charging: Preliminary Guidance for a Low-Cost and More Accessible Public Charging Solution for U.S. Cities Werthmann E, Kothari V · World Resources Institute · 2021 · Journal article DOI
  12. Vehicle-to-Grid in Standard and Fast Electric Vehicle Charging: Comparison of Renewable Energy Source Utilization and Charging Costs Falkoni A, Pfeifer A, Krajačić G · Energies · 2020 · Journal article DOI