E-mobility recharging infrastructure
The diffusion of road transport - private or public, for leisure or work - has characterized the development of motorway and road networks, changed the country’s morphology, and influenced the development of urban patterns. More attention to the environment, new technologies and the general obsolescence of facilities make the conditions for a new, more efficient, eco-sustainable mobility model, involving the creation of smart infrastructure and new social models.
In recent years, electric mobility has become central in the debate on public and private mobility and sustainability. At a European level, there has been a progressive penetration of electric vehicles, supported by substantial government incentives. The development of an adequate public charging infrastructure is considered a key element in the effective diffusion of electric mobility in Europe and Italy both for short-distance urban travel and long-distance.
In this context, the study, developed in collaboration with Politecnico di Milano [link], aims at carrying out a sizing of the public charging infrastructures needed to secure electric mobility across Italy by 2020, to identify the necessary distribution of such infrastructures and to provide the parameters needed to estimate the CO2 emissions, that could be avoided thanks to e-vehicles penetration, and the energy consumption needed to recharge them.
The research references four macro scenarios - minimum, intermediate, target and futuristic - corresponding to different levels of penetration of electric vehicles in Italy (90 thousand; 180 thousand; 360 thousand and one million electric vehicles in circulation respectively) and relates to different hypotheses regarding the evolution of technology and user behavior.
Urban and extra-urban road networks have been studied based on three different models. At an urban level, charging infrastructure determination was based on the study of usage profiles, with particular reference to commuting. On the motorway level the assessment of parameters referred to motorway network localization and congestion, in order to ensure that electric vehicle drivers are able to recharge even in low-traffic areas. Lastly, the network of charging infrastructures on state roads aims to ensure complete territorial coverage in order to guarantee the possibility of recharge.
The study estimates the number of charging infrastructures needed to cover 2020 demand at a national level. It goes from 9.152 charging infrastructures, in the minimum scenario of 90 thousand e-vehicles, inspired by the French experience that our country could approach if demand rises by 100% in 2020; to 11.623 charging infrastructures in the target scenario of 360 thousand e-vehicles, inspired by the German model. The futuristic scenario, with one million e-vehicles, estimates an optimum number of 24.327 charging infrastructures.
A link to the book dedicated to the study can be found below (Italian).