Six new charging locations with ultra-fast 300 kw charge points for electric trucks have been launched along a 600 km stretch of the Rhine-Alpine corridor across Germany. The new chargers have been installed at BP’s Aral fuel retail sites between the Rhine-Neckar and the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan regions.

The new charging stations are each capable of charging more than 20 trucks per charger each day, with an electric truck’s range reaching up to 200 km in around 45-minutes using the BP Pulse charge points.

Two additional locations are scheduled to open this year on Aral sites to complete the new charging corridor. Once complete, a truck will be able to cover over 600 km across Germany. Said to be one of the busiest road freight routes in Europe, the route connects key North Sea ports in Belgium and the Netherlands with the Mediterranean port of Genoa in Italy through a network of roads stretching 1,300 km.

By 2030, it has been estimated that approximately 270,000 battery electric medium and heavy-duty vehicles will be in operation in Europe and they will require up to 140,000 public and destination electric charging points. BP plans to have more than 100,000 chargers installed worldwide by 2030, focused on ultra-fast charging.

UK charging infrastructure   
Meanwhile, a new report by New AutoMotive suggests that the UK is on track to meet the government’s target of 300,000 public chargers for electric cars by 2030, although its findings show that industry uncertainty over future demand for electric vehicles (EVs) is holding back growth in charger numbers.

A major barrier identified by the report is a lack of clarity around future demand amongst industry stakeholders. The forthcoming Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) mandate is the government’s most effective means of driving EV uptake by ensuring the supply of electric cars, providing industry with certainty around future demand, and thus ensuring that the UK’s public charging network continues to expand at pace, the report says.

Many of the barriers identified in the report have slowed charge point installations in recent months. In some cases, the report found reasons for optimism that these would cease to be a problem in the future. Other barriers explored by the report include:

• Regulatory changes – the report found that recent changes to regulation around installing and operating charge points had disrupted some charging infrastructure operators’ plans in the short term, but that this should cease to be a problem in 2023.
• Electrical connection costs – a key barrier to installing additional infrastructure identified by the report has been the cost of upgrading local electricity connections to accommodate higher usage. The report finds that a recent decision by Ofgem to reform charges for electrical grid connections should reduce a significant barrier to future new charge points being installed.
• Land access and planning permission – another barrier identified is the difficulty in securing permission to lay new electrical cabling across land. The government recently consulted on reforming access rights to remove this barrier, and the report urges the government to proceed with this work in 2023.

The report also found that charging via the public network often offers significant running cost savings for EV owners. EVs charged at 68.7p/kWh work out cheaper to run per mile than diesel and petrol cars, and around seven in 10 public chargers are below this price point. The average cost of charging via Podpoint (47p/kWh), Chargeplace Scotland (30p/kWh), Ubitricty (42p/kWh), and BP Pulse (52p/kWh), collectively the four largest public providers in the UK, all fall well below this figure, meaning they offer significant running cost savings to motorists, notes the study.

Ciara Cook, Research and Policy Officer, New AutoMotive, comments: ‘The most crucial barrier the government can help industry overcome is uncertainty about future demand for public charging services. The forthcoming ZEV mandate is the most powerful tool at the government’s disposal as it seeks to overcome these barriers; it will ensure the supply of EVs in the UK meets demand, resulting in more electric cars on the road, and providing the charging infrastructure industry the security and certainty it requires to continue to grow at pace.’

However, other market observers are not as bullish as New AutoMotive in its report. For example, shortly after figures were published by the Department for Transport that revealed that less than 9,000 charge points were installed in the UK last year, The Times newspaper reported that the UK’s EV charge point target of installing 300,000 public charging points by 2030 was ‘20 years behind schedule'.