New PSB Trilemma Framework Reveals Core Tradeoffs in EV Charging Infrastructure

A team of six researchers (Xiao, Li, Mukhopadhyay, Ghanta, Baidya, Xiong) published a comprehensive 56-page survey on arXiv (2605.21665) that tackles the fragmented literature on EV charging systems. They introduce a three-layer Planning-Scheduling-Behavior (PSB) framework to categorize decisions by horizon, actor objective, and coupling structure. The core finding is a 'PSB trilemma': each layer is computationally hard individually, and realistic integration forces reducing fidelity in at least one layer. For example, omitting user behavior in planning can obscure equity outcomes, while fixing scheduling may ignore emissions dynamics.

The paper systematically reviews pairwise coupling literatures (Planning-Scheduling, Scheduling-Behavior, Planning-Behavior) and shows that the omitted third layer is typically treated as static or aggregate. This simplification enables tractability but imposes distinct costs: it can mask long-term investment feedback, temporal grid dynamics, or heterogeneous user response. The authors then identify open challenges in emerging charging technologies, behavioral incentive design, equity metrics, and city-scale learning-based methods that balance fidelity, interpretability, and policy relevance.