Planning for electric truck chargers is broken because truckers will literally cross borders just to find a cheaper plug.
March 24, 2026
Original Paper
Spatially flexible charging demand allocation of long-haul battery-electric trucks along inter-zonal transport corridors
SSRN · 6460625
The Takeaway
Most infrastructure planning assumes trucks will charge during mandatory breaks, but researchers found that price differences between European countries cause massive 'demand shifts.' This means a country with high electricity taxes might build a charging network that sits entirely empty while neighboring countries face grid overload.
From the abstract
Mobile consumers, such as long-haul battery-electric trucks, can flexibly allocate their charging demand across regions. This spatial dimension of demand-side flexibility has not been quantitatively addressed in research on electrified transport fleets under spatially varying charging costs. We address this gap by developing a linear optimization model that determines the cost-optimal spatial allocation of charging demand jointly with fleet turnover and modal shift from road to rail. The model i