Determining Charging Infrastructure Requirements for Electrified Long-Haul Freight Traffic on German Motorways: A Dual-Perspective Analysis

The electrification of long-haul freight transport requires a comprehensive public charging infrastructure along motorways. This study presents a framework combining multi-agent transport simulation (MATSim) with evolutionary bi-objective optimization (NSGA-II) to determine the number and spatial distribution of high-power charging (HPC) points for battery-electric trucks (BETs) on the German motorway network. Beyond infrastructure sizing, the approach also quantifies the impact of BET charging on the duration and distance of long-haul truck trips. The optimization simultaneously addresses the perspectives of two key stakeholders: charge point operators (CPOs), who seek to maximize charger utilization, and logistics operators, who aim to minimize waiting times. The results yield a range of Pareto-optimal configurations balancing the two objectives. A multi-iteration replanning step further lets trucks adapt their routes to experienced waiting times for a more realistic performance assessment, reducing mean waiting times by up to 92%. We evaluate five electrification levels from 1% to 20% across two charging network scenarios with 347 and 779 potential locations, respectively. For the balanced solutions—the knee-point configurations that best reconcile both objectives—at a 10% electrification level, the optimized network reaches a temporal charger utilization of 23% to 32% at mean waiting times of about 1.4 to 1.9 min per charging process. Compared with an internal combustion engine truck (ICET) reference, BET trip durations increase by only 0.9% to 1.3% due to charging detours. Overall, the fast-charging network planned by the German federal government appears sufficient for the HPC demand at electrification levels up to 10% to 15%, whereas additional low-power charging (LPC) infrastructure beyond the planned locations will be needed to cover overnight charging requirements.