Scaling behavior for electric vehicle chargers and road map to addressing the infrastructure gap

Alexius Wadell; Matthew Guttenberg; Christopher P Kempes; Venkatasubramanian Viswanathan

doi:10.1093/pnasnexus/pgad341

Scaling behavior for electric vehicle chargers and road map to addressing the infrastructure gap

PNAS Nexus. 2023 Oct 25;2(11):pgad341. doi: 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgad341. eCollection 2023 Nov.

Authors

Alexius Wadell^{1

2}, Matthew Guttenberg^{1

2}, Christopher P Kempes³, Venkatasubramanian Viswanathan^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Mechanical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA.
² Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA.
³ The Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, NM 87501, USA.

Abstract

Enabling widespread electric vehicle (EV) adoption requires a substantial build-out of charging infrastructure in the coming decade. We formulate the charging infrastructure needs as a scaling analysis problem and use it to estimate the EV infrastructure needs of the USA at a county-level resolution. We find that gasoline and EV charging stations scale sub-linearly with their respective vehicle registrations, recovering the sub-linear scaling typical of infrastructure. Surprisingly, we find that EV charging stations scale super-linearly with population size within counties, deviating from the sub-linear scaling of gasoline stations. We discuss how this demonstrates the infancy of both EVs and EV infrastructure while providing a framework for estimating future EV infrastructure demands. By considering the power delivery of existing gasoline stations, and appropriate EV efficiencies, we estimate the EV infrastructure gap at the county level, providing a road map for future EV infrastructure expansion.

Keywords: electric vehicles; infrastructure; scaling.