The E-Destination-project explores the potentials of electric mobility for tourim in the Lake Constance area. To evaluate the current situation and the supply of e-mobility infrastructure in the research area, all available charging stations and renting stations for electric vehicles were mapped. Several variables such as opening hours, accessibility, type of plugs/vehicles and many more were recorded. One important aspect is, who operates the existing charging stations, because these operators are responsible for the accessibility and charging costs. They decide, which network-keys can be used to access the stations through agreements with other operators and charging service companies.
Of the 284 charging stations that were found in total, 140 of them are operated by actors who have 2 or more charging stations (either inside or outside the research area). The map clearly shows that all of them operate within national, mostly also within regional or even local boundaries. The only exception is the Austrian “Vorarlberger Kraftwerke AG” who operate a charging station near the St.-Gallen-Altenrhein airport in Switzerland, close to the boarder with Austria. Especially in Germany (and also in Austria, but here only a part of the federal state of Vorarlberg is part of the detailed analysis), the market areas are well-defined and mostly according to political entities. As an example, the “Stadtwerk am See” only operates charging stations within the district “Bodenseekreis” and “Stadtwerke Lindau” only around the city of Lindau. which is due to the fact that these municipal suppliers have their designated market areas. However, in Switzerland, several supra-regional/national operators provide charging stations within the research area, such as EVITE, MOVE, easy4you/Alpiq, und swisscharge. They by trend provide a denser network than nationwide suppliers in Germany (RWE) and Austria (A1, Smatrics). In general, we conclude that there is a big variety in operators of charging stations in the research area, especially when also taking into account that half of the stations that are not operated by someone who has more than one charging station. This means that without cooperation between the different operators, the supply of charging infrastructure would be very fragmented.
More info about the project can be here in this blog and on our website.