Future Urban Charging Solutions for Electric Vehicles

The numbers of electric vehicles (EV) will increase as many countries perceive EVs as a solution to reduce the emissions of transportation and therefore incentivize their adoption. However, the deployment of public charging infrastructure is lagging behind that of EVs, which represents a potential barrier to their wide-scale adoption. The objective of this paper is to develop a comprehensive overview of potential EV charging solutions to be deployed in urban areas. Using a micro-Delphi approach, experts from transport, energy and urban planning were consulted and identified 15 realistic options for charging electric vehicles in urban environments by 2035. The solutions range from purely technical to more service oriented. Most of these solutions already exist today, although some remain at a very early stage of deployment. The five most likely options were on-street public charging points, charging at work, fast-charging stations, using building domestic plugs and semi-fast charging in public areas. When combined with the typical mobility and residential profiles, our results show that EV drivers will most likely rely on a mix of solutions, when they have no home chargers. As such, no breakthrough or major shift is expected in charging infrastructures, rather a scale-up of existing solutions. Our analysis concludes that urban charging options will be numerous and no single solution is expected to dominate as users with different EV user profiles will charge at different times and locations.