When discussing the electrification of our transportation sector, a lot of questions comes up about future infrastructure needs.
To plot a course to where we want to go we first need to know where we are. Today, Sweden has a little over 2500 gas stations servicing the 5.8M vehicles (5.1M cars, 0.7M trucks, 12k buses, i.e.) on our roads. Future need for charging points will be different since a very large portion of charging will take place at a home or office, not at a public EV charger, the equivalent to todays gas stations.
After the last few years increasing sales of electric vehicles we now have 200 000 Battery EVs in Sweden. These EVs are now serviced by a total of 14,000 charge points (1800 DC chargers), thus 14 EVs per charge point (111 EVs per DC charger). Assuming the same ratio, 408,000 charge points and 52,000 DC chargers will be needed by 2035. Again, most of those charging points will be private like at someone’s private villa where they charge over night.
Public charging stations will be needed when a person take a longer trip than usual or for people living in apartments without access to their own charging point. When doing the math, it looks probably that Sweden will need around public 2500 EV charging stations, about the same as the number of gas stations today. The future is not always so different, just cleaner, greener and still with polar bears.