California Electric Vehicle Infrastructure for Long-Distance Travel: Direct Current Fast Charging Needs to Enable Interregional Long-Distance Travel for Electric Vehicles

This report highlights the methods, inputs, assumptions, and results of the Electric Vehicle Infrastructure for Road Trips (EVI-RoadTrip) model. Key results were previously published in the inaugural Assembly Bill 2127 Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Assessment, and this report expands upon that report to provide more detailed analysis and discussion.

EVI-RoadTrip simulations project the numbers and locations of direct current fast charging (DCFC) infrastructure needed for long-distance travel of battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) greater than 100 miles within and across California’s borders. This work addresses an under-researched, but increasingly important use case for transportation electrification: long-distance travel. A fast-charging network connecting regions within and outside California is critical to accelerating and maximizing the transition to EVs by reducing range anxiety.

The model follows four key steps: trip data generation, energy and charging simulation, station siting and sizing, and grid-hosting capacity analysis. The model simulates interregional and out-of-state road trips by BEVs, estimates energy use and charging demand along the road trip routes, calculates geographic clusters of charging demand, and simulates the existence of charging stations to serve those clusters, locating them in preferred areas with appropriate chargers.

Assuming drivers prioritize charging at their origin or destination, an average of about 1,000 DCFC stations and nearly 2,000 DC fast charging ports are estimated to support the electrified interregional travel of more than 5 million BEVs in 2030. Charging from road trips in this scenario is projected to result in a system peak load of about 60 megawatts around 2 to 3 p.m. However, this report also highlights how these results can significantly vary depending on vehicle population, charging behavior, and other conditions. In particular, it may be possible to meet these charging needs with a smaller number of stations, and the same total number of chargers, as long as charging is available on all interregional travel corridors in the state.