EVwire brief: Europe's battery-electric trucks (BETs) will need around 100 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity a year by 2035, and about 200 TWh by 2045, according to a new study from the ICCT and Fraunhofer ISI.
Most of that energy won't come from highway chargers. Depot charging is projected to make up 70% to 80% or more of total demand in most countries, with public en-route charging only taking a large share (30% to 50%) in smaller transit countries.
Demand will also be packed into a small number of places. The top 10% of the study's hexagonal map cells account for 60% to 90% of each country's truck charging energy, meaning grid upgrades will be needed at specific hotspots rather than everywhere at once.
Here's the ICCT's projection of annual electric truck charging demand by country under both of its scenarios:
The International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) study covers the 27 EU member states plus the UK, Norway and Switzerland, mapping charging demand on a grid of hexagons measuring about 17 by 20 km (11 by 12 miles) each. Here are the highlights.
Germany, France and the UK will lead demand
Under the study's Moderate Electrification scenario, which assumes road-toll exemptions for zero-emission trucks and carbon pricing on road fuels, Germany's trucks would draw 475.4 gigawatt-hours (GWh) a week by 2035. France (314.6 GWh) and the UK (313.3 GWh) follow, with a big gap down to Spain (96.1 GWh) and Austria (93.8 GWh).
Demand in many countries roughly doubles over the following decade, with Germany reaching 835.8 GWh a week by 2045. Switzerland, Austria, Denmark, Norway and the UK show the highest BET share of their national truck fleets in that scenario.
Here's how weekly charging demand stacks up country by country in 2035, with Germany well ahead of the pack:
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Depots do most of the work
Depot charging for trucks on regional routes makes up more than half of total demand in every year and scenario studied. That share peaks at about 90% in the early years of the Minimum Electrification scenario and drops to about 55% by 2045 in the Moderate scenario, as more long-haul trucks go electric.
Estonia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Sweden, Latvia and Greece have the largest shares of public en-route charging, while Norway, the UK, Poland and Denmark lean hardest on depots. Timing differs, too: depot charging peaks in the evening and overnight, while public en-route charging peaks around midday.
Here's the split between regional depot, long-haul depot and en-route charging for each country in 2035:
Demand clusters in a few hotspots
The top 1% of hexagons capture roughly 25% to 33% of each country's charging energy, approaching 50% in some countries. In the busiest hexagons of larger freight markets, peak loads reach 20 to 50 megawatts (MW), and the UK and Luxembourg exceed 50 MW by 2045 in the Moderate scenario.
The hexagon around the Magdeburger Kreuz highway junction in Germany is one example, with 1,445 megawatt-hours (MWh) of weekly demand and a 22.4 MW peak in 2035. The study's authors summed up what that means for grids:
"These results highlight that local grid challenges are likely to emerge at specific charging hotspots rather than uniformly across national electricity systems."
The ICCT's Europe-wide map shows where those hotspots sit, with red cells marking the heaviest weekly demand:
Policy decides how fast it happens
The Moderate scenario puts more than 460,000 BETs on EU-27 roads by 2030 and over 3.45 million by 2045, or 56.5% of the total heavy-duty fleet. That's enough to beat the EU's 2040 heavy-duty CO2 targets by 13%.
Without toll exemptions or carbon pricing, the Minimum scenario reaches only about 250,000 BETs in 2030 and ends up 51% short of the BET fleet needed for 2040 compliance. The ICCT recommends investing in grid capacity ahead of demand at clear hotspots, prioritizing depot charging, and tailoring charging strategies to each country.
Here's how the EU-27's electric truck fleet grows under each scenario, against the BET stock needed to meet the CO2 standards (the dashed line):
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Context:
The ICCT's hotspot map lines up with where Europe's truck charging buildout is already happening. Milence recently teamed up with Depotcharge to put public and depot truck charging on one platform, starting in Germany, the study's biggest demand market. Amazon's carrier partners have also gained access to Aral pulse's ultra-fast truck charging network in Germany.
Fleet operators are building out their own depots in parallel. H.Essers is expanding charging capacity at its Genk and Bergen op Zoom sites to 2.7 MW, while GEODIS is expanding its own charging corridors in France alongside a 110-truck order. In Spain, Prologis and PragmaCharge opened a Valencia truck charging hub with 50 ports planned.
Heres’s the ICCT study:
Source: ICCT and Fraunhofer ISI, Spatiotemporal analysis of electric truck charging demand in Europe
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