Managing autonomous vehicles needing energy replenishment

1. A computer-implemented method for managing autonomous vehicles, the computer-implemented method comprising:

collecting, by a computer, autonomous vehicle energy data and travel data;

determining, by the computer, a plurality of autonomous vehicles that need energy replenishment within a defined geographic area;

determining, by the computer, a rank for each of the plurality of autonomous vehicles that need energy replenishment within the defined geographic area to meet passenger-defined travel destination time constraints; and

directing, by the computer, each autonomous vehicle to an energy station in a set of energy stations within the defined geographic area to meet the passenger-defined travel destination time constraints based on the rank of each of the plurality of autonomous vehicles.

2. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 further comprising:

calculating, by the computer, whether an autonomous vehicle needs to replenish an onboard energy source to reach a travel destination based on collected autonomous vehicle energy data and travel data corresponding to the autonomous vehicle.

3. The computer-implemented method of claim 2 , wherein the onboard energy source is selected from a group consisting of electricity for an electric engine autonomous vehicle and combustible fuel for a combustion engine autonomous vehicle.

4. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 , wherein the computer uses the rank of each of the plurality of autonomous vehicles to prioritize scheduling of each autonomous vehicle at the energy station.

5. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 further comprising:

transmitting, by the computer, via a network, routing information to the energy station and prioritized scheduling at the energy station to each autonomous vehicle needing energy replenishment.

6. The computer-implemented method of claim 5 further comprising:

transmitting, by the computer, via the network, a notification of an energy replenishing event at the energy station with an indication as to whether the passenger-defined travel destination time constraints will be met to a passenger of a respective autonomous vehicle needing energy replenishment based on the prioritized scheduling at the energy station.

7. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 , wherein the computer collects the autonomous vehicle energy data and travel data from each respective autonomous vehicle in the plurality of autonomous vehicles in real time.

8. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 , wherein the energy data includes a current energy level and energy consumption rate of each respective autonomous vehicle.

9. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 , wherein the travel data includes travel destination, travel route, and the passenger-defined travel destination time constraints corresponding to each respective autonomous vehicle.

10. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 , wherein the computer directs autonomous vehicles to selected energy stations that will minimize energy replenishment times to meet the passenger-defined travel destination time constraints.

11. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 , wherein the computer uses ranking criteria and weighting factors to determine the rank and a queue time for each respective autonomous vehicle needing energy replenishment at selected energy stations.

12. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 , wherein the defined geographic area includes one or more zones having one or more roadway systems.

13. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 , wherein the computer is a server computer in a cloud environment.