Electrification of personal vehicle travels in cities - Quantifying the public charging demand

Charging electric vehicles is regarded as trivial with chargers installed on private property, which could accommodate the demand of 78% of the Danish cars. Hence, the owners would rarely need to charge outside the household. Car owners in the cities often do not have this option and must rely on the public charging infrastructure. In this work we quantify the need, in terms of energy demand, for public chargers on a national level and in the largest Danish cities as a function of car ownership, driving distance and household parking condition. We assess the potential of destination charging at existing shared parking facilities next to the household and the workplace to reduce the public charging demand to be up to 87%. EVs with 300 km range are able to complete the daily driving distance without range extending charging in 98.4% of the days. The analysis relies on driving and ownership data based on the Danish national transport survey. Further, we identify suitable/optimal locations for the necessary public chargers based on the total amount of parking time spent by a car at different destinations and the duration of a stay. We generalise the relationship between publicly available information such as population density and city size and the parameters that determine the public charging demand. The systematic approach enables others to estimate the demand in time and space for other cities or countries.