In Europe, Italy lags behind in terms of electric vehicle market share. However,
recent sales and new policies indicate that this is changing in a fast pace. To anticipate this growth, Italy will have to invest heavily in charging infrastructure to support electrified vehicles. This paper models a scenario where electric vehicles reach a 68% sales share by 2030. Consequently, it estimates the charging capacity required by metropolitan areas per year and by charger type. Additionally, the cost for home, workplace, public, and fast charging is estimated.
The paper draws some high-level conclusions:
Especially metropolitan areas require more workplace and public chargers, as well as fast chargers. To reach the goal of an electric vehicle sales share of 68% by 2030, approximately 380,000 normal speed chargers (public and workplace) and 16,000 fast chargers are needed.
As of now, metropolitan areas have no more than 9% of the charging capacity needed by 2025. For non-metropolitan areas this number is 14%. This means that charging capacity in cities will need to grow 50% per year until 2025 and 38% per year in rural areas. The scenarios in this paper project that home charging will also require a strong growth. Governments and utilities will have to support this growth by means of funding and coordinating installations.
By 2030, over 50% of electric vehicle owners will live in apartments, suggesting that special focus should be pointed towards installing overnight charging stations at or in the vicinity of apartments.
The total estimated cost for the installation of required chargers between 2021 and 2030 is €3.2 billion for non-home charging and €7.5 billion for home charging. This number seems high, but the cost for non-home chargers needed to support each new car decreases from €1,000 in 2021 to €400 in 2030.
The costs will decline for a number of reasons: over time, away-from-home chargers will see an increase in utilisation, increasingly larger charging stations will enjoy scale-benefits and there will be a reduction in hardware cost.
According to the model for Italy, an investment of €7,- per capita is needed in 2021, rising to €39,- per year in 2030. In other European countries with more developed charging networks, like Germany and the UK, public charging investments are already at a level of about €5,- per capita annually. These investments are made through a number of popular programs, which can provide examples for Italy.
However, not all investments need to come from the government. In the UK and Germany, a cost share has been instituted for most government charger programs. For example, a very popular program in Germany targeting homeowners and private businesses received requests for 620,000 charging points, totalling €530 million. In the UK, more than €1 billion is being spent on fast charging stations along highways over a period of 4 years, and over €100 for on-street charging.
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