Model Analysis of Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Development on Highways —An Approximation of the Required Scale of Electric Vehicle Charging Facilities—

In recent years, electric vehicles (EVs) have gained prominence because of its reduction in CO2 emissions and its departure from dependence on oil. As an increasing number of EV models are becoming commercially available, their popularity is expected to grow. Ongoing efforts to improve EV performance have not addressed inadequacies in their driving range, which is approximately 160 km. This is an issue particularly on highways in cases of long-distance driving. Hence, this research focuses on the EV support infrastructure of charging facilities on highways and proposes a mathematical model to estimate the number of EVs arriving at the charging facilities. Moreover, the model is applied to Japanese highway networks and its validity is examined. We change the number of power-feed intervals and infrastructure facilities and evaluate the various parameters to estimate the required number of EV charging facilities.