Battery Electric Vehicle Fast Charging–Evidence from the Norwegian Market

Abstract

Norway is the largest Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV) market in the world per capita. The share of the passenger vehicle fleet passed 9.4% at the end of 2019, and users have access to 1500 Combined Charging System (CCS)/Chademo standard fast chargers located in more than 500 different locations. This paper analyses the usage pattern of these fast chargers using a dataset from two large operators covering most of their charging events between Q1 2016 and Q1 2018. The target of the analysis was to understand the fundamental factors that drive the demand for fast charging and influences the user experience, so that they can be taken into account when dimensioning charge facilities, and when designing vehicles. The data displays clear variations in charge power, charge time and charged energy between winter and summer, and a large spread of results due to the BEV models different technical characteristics. The charge power is clearly reduced in the winter compared to the summer, while the charge time is longer. Some charge events have a particularly low charge power which may be due to users fast charging a cold battery at a high State of Charge (SOC) in a vehicle with passive battery thermal management.