*Motivation*

Electric vehicles are popular nowadays, and many are embracing the idea of an electricity-run car with the utmost interest. However, in reality, EV owners are still not confident enough or are often hesitant to go for long road trips. This is mainly due to the relatively small number of available charging stations compared to conventional fuel stations. If the car has a dual mode that runs both on electricity and traditional fuel, the problem is making a decision of how much fuel is to be always carried (how frequently the fuel tank needs to be filled up) and how frequently to charge the battery of the EV. This adds an extra layer of decision making for EV owners. In the usual case, an owner would like to run the vehicle on electricity, as it is designed to run in that way, which makes it often significantly costlier than many other regular cars. Thus, the issue we have here is that we need some kind of efficient charging mechanism or model to support long journeys by EVs. Some previous works tried to solve this issue in some ways, but as mentioned in the previous section, almost all of them fall short of the required efficiency, and some have not even given enough thought to this issue; i.e., models are available, but they are not comprehensive or advanced enough. We found a gap in the existing literature on this issue, and that basically motivated us to devise our mechanism.

P2P systems can be used for this issue of charging, but they would require trust and security, as complete strangers can come to a charging station. In this case, a good way to think about getting a solution is that anyone who is registered under the blockchain would be allowed to get the service. The blockchain makes the system secure and trustworthy, preventing malicious attacks while recording each transaction. This would create an increase in the number of charging stations throughout a country, creating a source of income for charge-point providers without the intervention of a third party.

Furthermore, it can reduce the pressure on expanding the infrastructure for setting up new charging stations to meet the rising demands of EV charging. This P2P charging environment will enable an opportunity to see an increase in the frequency of EVs in sectors such as delivery and medical (ambulance), where EVs are still considered inefficient. As we aim to move on to a greener future, we need to exploit our infrastructure the most we can without consuming more areas to set up charging stations.

To minimize the hassles such as platform dependency of the payment system, uncontrolled pricing, and delays because of payment confirmation, in the proposed method, all those issues are solved by using blockchain-based cryptocurrency. A charging management system is responsible for measuring the transferred energy, and it calculates the price according to that. Then, the system can directly make a transaction in the blockchain, and the amount will be automatically deducted from the service receiver's account. In this way, the payment will be much easier, easy to handle, and time-saving for both parties.

A reputation management system is added to the proposed method where EVs can provide a review about the service received, more specifically, about the HCS. Upon receiving a review, the server will calculate the mean of overall ratings for each HCS, and while suggesting nearby HCSs to the EVs, HCSs with relatively higher ratings will get priority on the list. Moreover, as the HCSs have the authority to fix their own pricing, they can balance the ratings and pricing.
