Outlook for electric vehicle charging
Last updated
Last updated
Public charging could increase sixfold by 2035, helping mass-market consumers switch to electric
Large-scale adoption of EVs hinges on the simultaneous roll-out of accessible and affordable charging. The early adopters of electric cars have tended to live in single-family detached homes with affordable and convenient access to home charging. As a result, most charging to date has been private (at home and other private locations). At the same time, public chargers have tended to be installed in urban areas, where utilization rates are likely to be higher. Looking forward, however, chargers must also be installed outside of urban areas to enable beyond cities and suburbs.
For commercial vehicle operators, similarly to owners of personal EVs, overnight charging of electric HDVs at depots offers a convenient way to charge stationary vehicles. Charging overnight also has the benefit of being able to charge at relatively low power rates given the amount of time available. This kind of charging strategy requires a close to one-to-one ratio of depot charger per electric HDV.
In the near term, it is expected that electrification of HDVs will proceed most quickly for segments with relatively short (under 200 km/day), predictable daily routes, such as city buses, urban and even some regional delivery services. Overnight depot charging could likely meet most of the needs of these fleets.
In addition, there will also be a role for opportunity chargers. Opportunity chargers can be at the end of a bus line or at a truck loading dock, where vehicles can take advantage of waiting time to charge without disrupting typical operations. Opportunity chargers also include public chargers along motorways that allow for en-route charging. For some HDVs, such as intercity buses and long-haul trucks, en-route fast charging may be needed to supplement depot charging in order to enable long-distance driving. While these segments could be slower to electrify, their relatively high share of activity today – and thus emissions – mean they will be important to decarbonise.
Road transport electrification at the global scale is expected to unlock substantial emission reductions in the coming decades. While it will be important to keep in check any additional emissions coming from electricity generation for EVs, these emissions will be more than outweighed by the emissions reductions resulting from a switch to electric. In the STEPS, the emissions avoided by using EVs rather than ICE equivalents (alongside continued improvements to ICE fuel economy) reach over 2 Gt of CO2 equivalent (CO2-eq) in 2035. Additional emissions from electricity generation for EVs are far smaller, at over 380 Mt CO2-eq, meaning there is a net saving of 1.8 Gt CO2-eq in 2035 in the STEPS. Sustained decarbonisation of power generation helps deliver even more emission reductions in the APS, in which net emissions avoided by switching to electric reach around 2 Gt CO2-eq in 2035.
A battery electric car sold in 2023 will emit half as much as conventional equivalents over its lifetime
Today, there are already substantial emissions benefits to switching to EVs when emissions are considered on a lifecycle basis, which includes the emissions associated with the production of the vehicle as well as the well-to-wheel emissions (i.e. well-to-tank and tank-to-wheel emissions). In both the STEPS and APS these benefits increase over time as the electricity mix is decarbonised further.
Globally, in the STEPS, the lifecycle emissions of a medium-size battery electric car are about half of those of an equivalent ICEV that is running on oil-based fuels, more than 40% lower than for an equivalent HEV, and about 30% lower than for a PHEV over 15 years of operation, or around 200 000 km. These emissions savings increase by around 5 percentage points in the APS, as the grid decarbonises more quickly than in the STEPS. When comparing vehicles purchased in 2035, an ICE car produces almost two-and-a-half times the emissions of a battery electric car in the STEPS, and over three times as many in the APS, over the vehicle lifetime. For a medium-sized car, this equates to 38 t CO2‑eq over the ICE car lifetime compared to 15 t CO2‑eq for a BEV.
Policies focused on charging infrastructure play an important role in increasing the number of charging points per EV. Specifically, the EU (AFIR) requires member states to ensure publicly accessible charging stations offer in aggregate at least 1.3 kW of power output per BEV and 0.8 kW per PHEV. The capacity requirements can be relaxed once 15% battery electric stock share has been reached. In the APS, the average charging capacity per EV is close to 1 kW, despite over 80% of electric LDVs being battery electric, given that battery electric LDVs reach a 30% stock share. The AFIR regulation also requires that from 2025 onward, DC fast charging (at least 150 kW) be installed every 60 km along the EU Trans-European Transport Network (TEN‑T). As such, the share of fast chargers is set to increase from the 2023 share of approximately 15%.
Statistics on the availability of home chargers are scattered, and our analysis therefore assumes that access to home charging covers 50‑80% of the electric LDV fleet, based on various surveys, depending on the share of population residing in dense urban areas. We estimate that globally there were 27 million home chargers in operation in 2023, or 150 GW of charging capacity and 1.6 electric LDVs per home charger. The stock grows more than tenfold by 2035 in the STEPS to reach over 270 million. In the APS, the home charger stock reaches around 300 million in 2035.
