Pre-Normative Charging Technology Roadmap for Heavy-Duty Electric Vehicles in Europe

This paper presents a pre-normative roadmap that foresees the developments in the charging of heavy-duty electric vehicles (HD-EVs). It supports and facilitates the future standardization efforts of charging technologies by creating an overview of the popularity of charging technologies and the end users’ needs. The required input for the work was collected using a comprehensive investigation on the available charging technologies and their standardization, reviewing the existing roadmaps and research work, and conducting surveys and interviews of end users and technical stakeholders. According to the findings, a pantograph on the roof of a vehicle and plug-based charging are currently the most used charging interfaces. This trend is likely to continue in the future, since (1) pantographs on vehicle roofs, (2) pantographs on infrastructure, and (3) plugs were graded as charging interfaces with the highest potential by the participants of the technical survey. Static and conductive charging technologies show more potential than dynamic and wireless charging technologies. Nevertheless, inductive charging may be a future charging solution for HD-EVs if the current bottlenecks in the technology can be addressed. These bottlenecks include high prices, slightly lower efficiency, lack of standardization, the maximum achievable power, and safety concerns. Furthermore, interoperability was repeatedly mentioned as the main challenge for today’s charging technologies.