ICCT Spatiotemporal Analysis of Electric Truck Charging Demand in Europe (2026)
Source details
- Type
- Report
- Publisher
- International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT); Fraunhofer ISI
- Author
- Steffen Link, Daniel Speth, Patrick Plötz, Albert Alonso-Villar, Hussein Basma
- Published
- 2026-09
- Pages
- 52
Steffen Link, Daniel Speth, Patrick Plötz (Fraunhofer ISI) and Albert Alonso-Villar, Hussein Basma (ICCT), Spatiotemporal analysis of electric truck charging demand in Europe, ICCT report ID 649, September 2026. A modelling study, not measured load: its VESUVIO model estimates battery-electric truck (BET) charging energy and power for the EU-27 plus the UK, Norway and Switzerland, on a hexagonal grid of about 250 km2 (17 x 20 km), for heavy trucks above 12 tonnes (class N3) only. Buses, medium and light commercial vehicles and cars are excluded.
Scenarios
- Moderate Electrification: road-toll exemptions for zero-emission trucks (Eurovignette Directive) in every country plus ETS2 carbon pricing; no purchase premiums or depot-charging subsidies. By 2045 the EU-27 BET stock reaches over 3.45 million vehicles, 56.5% of heavy vehicles, enough to meet the EU heavy-duty CO2 standards beyond 2040.
- Minimum Electrification: no policy support; uptake driven only by technology development and charging prices. It covers the CO2 standards until 2032 and then falls 51% short of the required BET stock by 2040. Sweden is among the five countries with the highest relative BET penetration here (with Switzerland, Norway, Denmark and Germany).
Findings
| Finding | Detail |
|---|---|
| Demand | About 100 TWh a year by 2035 and about 200 TWh by 2045 across Europe (Moderate Electrification) |
| Depot vs public | Depot charging is typically 70–80% or more of energy; en-route public charging is 30–50% in smaller transit countries. Sweden has one of the highest long-haul en-route shares (with Estonia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Latvia, Greece); Norway, the UK, Poland and Denmark the highest depot shares |
| Concentration | The top 1% of hexagons hold roughly 25–33% of a country’s charging energy (about 50% in some countries) and the top 10% hold 60–90%; hotspots lie along major freight corridors and industrial hubs |
| Peak power | In the most heavily loaded hexagon, larger freight countries reach 20–50 MW and small ones a few MW; a few cases exceed 50 MW (UK and Luxembourg in 2045). Local grid problems are expected at hotspots, not uniformly |
| Load shape | Regional depot charging peaks in the evening and at night; public en-route and intermediate charging peak around midday. Larger batteries give lower, broader peaks with more overnight charging, though a bigger fleet can raise the system peak. Fast depot charging sharpens midday and evening peaks; optimised depot charging spreads load but still peaks around noon and early morning |
| Variation | Results use a representative average week; in busy weeks, two to three times a year, traffic and electricity demand can be 30–40% higher, so peaks are likely understated though hotspots stay the same |
Sweden. A case study assuming 20% of the truck stock is electric finds that the top 10% of Swedish hexagons hold about 70% of weekly charging demand and the lowest 50% only about 3%. The report’s Lund example (a hexagon between the E6 and E22 northeast of Malmö, Moderate Electrification, 2035) has 282 MWh a week, a 3.1 MW peak and a 41% public en-route share, with peaks at midday and midnight. These are modelled values for one scenario and year.
Recommendations
The authors argue against one-size-fits-all targets and recommend: focus charging and grid deployment on priority locations (informing AFIR implementation and the Commission’s Clean Transport Corridor Initiative, which covers the North Sea-Baltic and Scandinavian-Mediterranean corridors); proactive grid investment in high-demand hotspots, because grid expansion planning is reactive to customer demand and has long investment cycles; support depot charging while deploying public charging where transit demand is large; and country-specific deployment strategies. The introduction adds that without “proactive and flexible grid connections” insufficient distribution capacity may delay road-freight decarbonisation.
Limits
- Charging profiles derive mostly from German or Central European data; long-haul trucks use the regional profile. Hexagon peaks depend on the completeness of location data, and the uptake curve comes from a US model.
- Controlled charging (tariff-aware or grid-responsive) and vehicle-to-grid or vehicle-to-building at depots are not modelled; the authors name them as future work on the flexibility of truck charging. A follow-up is to match the demand to grid capacity per hexagon.
Relevance to existing wiki topics
- DSO Connection Queue Reform — The Swedish Policy Response and Flexible Connection Agreements: heavy-duty charging is a concrete driver of concentrated connection demand, and the report backs investment ahead of demand.
- Vehicle-to-Grid: the report leaves controlled charging and V2G at depots out of the model.
- COM(2026) 600 Art. 18d lists the transport sector among the categories a regulator may prioritise for connection; the IEA report makes a similar case for anticipatory planning.
- Distribution System Operator: hotspot concentration means reinforcement needs land on specific DSOs.