Update of the study “Charging Infrastructure after 2025/2030: Scenarios for the Market Takeoff”

The RLI continues to develop the methodology of the study “Charging Infrastructure after 2025/2030: Scenarios for the Market Takeoff” published in 2020 and thus updates the findings for the National Lead Agency for Charging Infrastructure (NLL). In the study, the scientists sought answers to the question: “How much and what kind of charging infrastructure needs to be built in Germany by 2030 for e-mobility ?”. The data basis will be updated as well as the information on technology or usage behavior. The study will also be extended to the year 2035 and the entire program code will be published with an open source license.

Updating the data basis

The need for charging infrastructure in Germany for different application scenarios (charging use cases) depends on many factors and assumptions. In cooperation with the NLL, the project team is updating the data basis of the previous study. In order to obtain new information, for example on the market ramp-up and technology of e-vehicles, charging behavior of users or attractiveness of the individual charging use cases, cleanroom talks and stakeholder dialogs are conducted. The analysis of data on mobility in Germany from 2017 (MiD data) is also being updated. The goal is to be able to simulatively map trips made by electric vehicles in Germany up to the year 2035. The update of the data is mainly carried out by NLL.

Further development of the methodology

In the previous study, the project team used a bottom-up approach to determine the nationwide need for charging infrastructure in different use cases. Since the study was published, the deployment of charging infrastructure has diversified and accelerated. Prioritizing the expansion of very high-power charging infrastructure (high-power charging infrastructure) is also new. For these reasons, the methodology of the study will be further developed. In addition to general improvements to the program code, a sensitivity analysis will be performed in the update. That is, the results will be examined in terms of their sensitivity to a change in different parameters, such as x or y.

Publication of the model

The program code of the study “Charging infrastructure after 2025/2030: Scenarios for the Market Takeoff” was written in the Matlab programming language and has not been published. This will change as a result of the update: All program code will be written in the Python programming language and published in full with the AGPL-3.0 open source license.

Project period: November 2022 – September 2023

• Evaluation of the updated data basis
• Further development of the methodology as well as the model of the study
• Publication of the results of the update of the study “Charging infrastructure after 2025/2030: Scenarios for the Market Takeoff”
• Publication of the complete program code

• Depending on the scenario, the study determines an installed charging capacity of 23.3 to 32.4 GW.
  This corresponds to a demand of 380,000 to 680,000 publicly accessible charging points, of which 55,000 to 90,000 are HPC charging points with a charging capacity of over 150 kW. The reference scenario, which combines the basic assumptions, results in a demand of 520,000 charging points, 68,000 of which are HPC charging points.
• The total amount of electrical energy charged in electric cars amounts to 37.8 TWh – with publicly accessible charging infrastructure providing between 36 and 50 per cent of this energy, depending on the scenario.
• The number of non-publicly accessible charging points at home and in companies has a major influence on the necessary publicly accessible charging infrastructure.
• The HPC scenario, which focuses on HPC charging infrastructure, reduces the total number of publicly accessible charging points required as the number of HPC charging points increases, while the installed charging capacity remains constant compared to the reference scenario.