From technology comparison to corridor allocation: modelling charging alternatives for battery-electric freight vehicles

Abstract

One of the key challenges in decarbonising long-haul road freight is the provision of suitable charging technology. These systems, including plug-in charging, battery swapping, and electric road systems (ERS), differ in both operational and economic characteristics, with relative value that changes across corridors and scenarios. This paper develops a corridor-level equilibrium framework to allocate on-road charging technologies for battery-electric heavy-duty freight vehicles. The model captures freight-specific operating conditions, corridor heterogeneity, and the strategic interaction between carriers, who minimize generalized freight costs through mode allocation, and facility providers, who determine infrastructure deployment and pricing to maximize profit. In particular, it incorporates queueing effects, the hours-of-service rule, and electric road systems (ERS) as a corridor-level layer that reduces stop-based charging demand.

Using a case study for Bavaria, Germany, and Austria, we find three main results. First, the baseline equilibrium is strongly plug-in oriented in aggregate, but swapping remains active on a limited set of short and dense corridors. Second, a higher value of time broadens the corridor range in which swapping remains competitive. Third, higher charging power mainly affects longer corridors, where it further strengthens plug-in charging. Overall, the results suggest that charging allocation is corridor-specific rather than universal, and that infrastructure decisions should be evaluated as part of an interacting corridor system rather than as isolated technology choices.