  Many city residents cannot install their private electric vehicle (EV)
chargers due to the lack of dedicated parking spaces or insufficient grid
capacity. This presents a significant barrier towards large-scale EV adoption.
To address this concern, this paper considers a novel business model, on-demand
valet charging, that unlocks the potential of under-utilized public charging
infrastructure to promise higher EV penetration. In the proposed model, a
platform recruits a fleet of couriers that shuttle between customers and public
charging stations to provide on-demand valet charging services to EV owners at
an affordable price. Couriers are dispatched to pick up low-battery EVs from
customers, deliver the EVs to charging stations, plug them in, and then return
the fully-charged EVs to customers. To depict the proposed business model, we
develop a queuing network to represent the stochastic matching dynamics, and
further formulate an economic equilibrium model to capture the incentives of
couriers, customers as well as the platform. These models are used to examine
how charging infrastructure planning and regulatory intervention will affect
the market outcome. First, we find that the optimal charging station densities
for distinct stakeholders are different: couriers prefer a lower density; the
platform prefers a higher density; while the density in-between leads to the
highest EV penetration as it balances the time traveling to and queuing at
charging stations. Second, we evaluate a regulatory policy that imposes a tax
on the platform and invests the tax revenue in public charging infrastructure.
Numerical results suggest that this regulation can suppress the platform's
market power associated with monopoly pricing, increase social welfare, and
facilitate the market expansion.
