The Fraunhofer Institute and Amazon have looked at how many fast-charging stations for electric trucks are needed in Europe. There are fewer than expected.
According to a study, 1,000 fast-charging stations are enough to supply 91 percent of the expected long-distance e-truck traffic in Europe in 2030. This is the conclusion reached by the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (ISI) in Karlsruhe and the US tech group Amazon in a joint study. “The results show that even fewer charging stations than required by the European Union would cover almost all European e-truck traffic,” says Patrick Plötz from Fraunhofer ISI. He is referring to an EU regulation on minimum targets, which he says requires more than 2,000 stations.
However, the charging stations would each have to have up to 20 fast-charging points with a particularly powerful megawatt charging system, Plötz stresses. That is slightly more than is planned in the federal government’s plans, for example. In Germany, according to the model calculation, 150 to 200 locations would be sufficient to achieve the 91 percent quota.
The calculations are based on the assumption that around 15 percent of trucks will be battery-powered by 2030. The researchers also made conservative calculations and assumed a rather low practical range of 400 kilometers and that the trucks will not charge at the depot.
The study suggests that industry and politics need to accelerate the introduction of megawatt charging systems, says Plötz. “Because this will enable logistics companies that do not have the option of depot charging to electrify their fleets.”
Source: Stern
