User centric charging infrastructure

The market share of full electric vehicles is still low in many European member states. Several reasons have been identified for this. Charging infrastructure is considered as one of the central reasons when the urban model does not allow for widespread garage availability, or when frequent long range travel is involved. Currently most EV owners have their own garage and live in peri-urban areas.

Innovative solutions need to be evaluated and developed to allow EV drivers to have a similar or even better mobility experience than with conventional fossil fuel vehicles in terms of availability, convenience, performance and costs of the necessary charging infrastructure. At the same time, the infrastructure should not affect the noise environment around them, in order not to create resistance to their installation in urban contexts.

In the longer term, electric roads can be considered for further streamlining the user experience and optimising vehicle design, starting from urban and peri-urban applications such as bus, taxi and LDV lanes, for later extension to extra-urban applications.

The challenge will be to support the accelerated deployment of recharging infrastructure, on one hand a slow charging one for cities with low garage availability, on the other to support occasional ultrafast charging for long range travel. The responsible stakeholders need to be incentivized to take clear steps for a wide availability of charging points and to improve the conditions for a broad market acceptance in the electrification of transport.

Scope

Proposals will have to address all following technical areas including demonstration of the final solutions and their interoperability in multiple cities and TEN-T transnational road links:

• Analysis of subjective perception of charging options and identification of decision influences and concerns of users. The results should provide the basis for strategies or solutions to encourage or incentivize users of different social groups to overcome acceptance barriers in order to accelerate widespread usage of EVs.
• Attractive and convenient charging infrastructure access with connected vehicle systems avoiding waiting times (through for instance, charging facility reservation and scheduling, integration with route planning of multiple vehicles). User preferences like use of renewable energy and avoidance of frequent handling of heavy cables have to be considered. Automated conductive or wireless solutions are expected with highly reliable and interoperable devices. Test methods need to be further optimized, for instance to assess interoperability. Optionally, further extension of the developed stationary wireless charging technology towards urban and periurban "electric road" applications, with the aim of creating an installed base of wireless-ready vehicles to provide the critical mass needed for the deployment of electrified roads at a later stage.
• Transparent, flexible and interconnected payment systems for maximum availability of the charging infrastructure also for drivers who do not regularly use the same car (company/family sharing, commercial car sharing, rental cars, …) or travel across Europe.
• User survey about parking habits, considering for instance how much time is spent at a given location; what type of services are needed or expected during charging; how should the future charging station look like.
• Improvement of the currently deployed or planned superfast charging systems according to the previous survey to convince all car owners of the advantages of electric mobility including a sufficient convenience for long trips. All technical possibilities for optimization, both on the vehicle (like temperature preconditioning), or for energy demand rationalisation (e.g. local renewable power support for solar panels, battery storage for peak shaving and other grid services, demand control by interconnected route management systems for incoming vehicles while taking into account the electricity grid availability and voltage and frequency control constraints in real-time) need to be taken into account.
• Scalable charging infrastructure for ramp-up of expected electric mobility needs in terms of power levels and number of charging posts at one site, adequately managing the impact on the grid.
• Cheap low power DC-Charging for highly efficient connection to future home and office energy systems based on DC-Networks with possibility of V2G by smartening the link between vehicle, charging infrastructure and the grid.
• Low power DC-charging for LEV’s in combination with theft-proof parking for two-wheelers.
• Analysis of market models, regulatory and harmonization recommendations to foster the deployment of EV charging infrastructure in all member states of the EU. Demand control also for slow charging in public or private parking garages shall be enabled by standardized communication to remove barriers of electricity installations in existing apartment blocks and garages considering smart grid implications.
• Development of planning methods to optimize the location of charging sites, taking in consideration user needs and habits (volume of EVs in the area, type of mobility needs, accessibility to charging points, traffic volume, …) as well as time and costs associated to the availability and reinforcement of the necessary electricity network with easy scalability according to the different stages of EV penetration. Analysis and cost effective solutions for specific cases like availability of infrastructure in isolated mountain or seaside locations, or for special events, where high peak demand is associated with short periods of use. Consideration for local storage benefits in the different cases studied.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU between EUR 8 and 15 million depending on the level of involved demonstration would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Expected Impact

• Wide user acceptance beyond early adopters, urban users and garage parkers;
• Foster investors to invest in charging infrastructure;
• Determine legal gaps which slow down infrastructure expansion and propose solutions;
• Develop test methods and set up procedures to improve interoperability issues of vehicle-to-charger and charger-to-infrastructure communication;
• Facilitate grid integration of high-power chargers;
• Improve and standardize charging solutions and payment systems for LEVs for price reduction and higher market acceptance in urban environments.

Cross-cutting Priorities

• Contractual Public-Private Partnerships (cPPPs)
• EGVI
• Socio-economic science and humanities