The tool estimates the annual charging infrastructure required on each German or cross-border road edge. The model translates road freight activity into edge-level charging demand, splits that demand into a depot channel and a public channel, and then builds concrete charging capacity in each channel independently. Costs are calculated bottom-up for every electrified site and then aggregated by edge and for the full network.
The central interpretation is that most heavy-truck charging happens at private depots and logistics halls, and a smaller share happens at public parking sites along the corridor. The tool sets this split explicitly through the depot share, adds a separate provisioning buffer to each channel, and then fills each channel greedily until its buffered target is met.
For every edge e, charging demand is derived from annual truck traffic, edge length and the usable driving range within the selected SoC window.
Demand_e is the annual number of equivalent truck charging events caused by the freight activity on edge e. The model assumes 100% BEV truck traffic.
For each charger type, the charging time is calculated over the selected SoC window. Up to 80% SoC, power is constant. Above 80%, the charging curve tapers exponentially.
The charger mix is interpreted as a count-weighted mix of physical chargers. Charger costs are averaged by charger shares. Charger capacity is not derived by dividing operating time by the average charging time; instead, it uses the share-weighted average of charger rates. This keeps the representative charger consistent with the installed average power of the selected charger mix.
For parking sites, annual capacity per built charger follows from operating time, charger utilization, operating days and the average charger rate of the count-weighted parking mix.
Edge demand is divided into a depot channel served by logistics halls and a public channel served by parking sites, using the selected Depot share of demand. Each channel receives its own buffer factor, so the built capacity target can exceed the pure demand share to allow for provisioning reserve.
The public buffer factor defaults to 1.0 and the depot buffer factor to 1.15, so the depot channel carries a small provisioning reserve while the public split stays at pure demand. Note that the public side already carries a temporal reserve through the parking Charger utilization (installed power is 1/utilization times the daily average), so a public buffer well above 1.0 would double-count the arrival peak.
Only halls above Minimum hall size are eligible. On each edge, eligible halls are sorted by hall area in descending order and electrified in that order until the depot target is met. In a fully electrified truck fleet every dock of a selected hall is a charging dock, so all docks of a selected hall are electrified. The last hall required to reach the target electrifies only as many docks as needed, so the actual electrified-dock share of that hall is an output of the model, not an input.
If the eligible halls on an edge cannot cover the depot target, the remaining shortfall is carried over to the public channel. The public channel does not carry back to the depot channel.
Parking sites are processed edge by edge. Within one edge, sites are sorted by full-build cost per charger and electrified in that order until the public target is reached, including any depot shortfall carried over. The final required site may be only partially electrified.
Each electrified parking site and logistics hall receives the same cost categories: grid connection, substations, chargers and BESS. Parking sites use the parking charger mix; logistics halls use the logistics charger mix.
Coverage is intentionally not capped at 100%. Some edges can exceed the original edge demand because logistics halls and parking sites may jointly supply more than the base demand. This is relevant when comparing the spatial distribution of infrastructure costs.
The virtual fallback prices demand that the concrete infrastructure does not place on identified sites. It has two roles. First, an eligible edge with no concrete parking site or logistics hall is covered entirely by the fallback. Second, on edges where the concrete depot and public channels together fall short of demand (because the available halls and parking sites on that edge are exhausted), the remaining residual demand is topped up by the fallback. Both use the average cost per supplied truck of the concrete buildout, so total demand coverage reaches 100% by construction. This is not a physical site decision; it is a residual cost estimate.
The dynamic charging comparison evaluates the selected ERS / dynamic charging cost per kilometre against the static charging cost of each edge. For every edge, the least-cost hybrid output selects the cheaper technology.