Public fast charging infrastructure for battery electric trucks—a model-based network for Germany

Abstract

Globally, road freight accounts for 40% of the CO2 emissions in the transport sector, mainly from heavy-duty vehicles (HDVs). All the major truck markets have introduced fuel efficiency regulations for HDV, and the more ambitious regulations require the introduction of zero-emission HDV, for which battery electric trucks (BEVs) are a promising candidate. However, frequent long-distance trips require a dense public high-power charging network if BEV are to meet today's operating schedules in logistics. Here, we develop a model for public BEV high-power fast-charging that uses widely available traffic count data as input and combines this with on-site queueing models. We apply the model to Germany and obtain a fast-charging network where average waiting times do not exceed 5 min. For 15% BEV in the truck stock and 50% public charging, the model shows 267 charging locations, each with 2-8 charging points per location, for a dense network with 50 km distance between charging locations. We calculated 142 charging locations with 2-13 charging points for a wider network with 100 km distance between locations. Our results help to design future charging infrastructure for electric road freight transport.