An empirical analysis of electric vehicles’ charging patterns at public charging infrastructure across neighbourhood archetypes

Abstract

To promote the uptake of electric vehicles, a well-developed public charging infrastructure (PCI) is essential, particularly in areas with limited access to private charging, as in many inner-city quarters in Europe, where private parking areas are rare. To better understand where, when and how PCI is used today, this study presents a transferable methodology for deriving neighbourhood archetypes (NAT-) specific charging profiles from real-world public charging data, and demonstrates its application to seven neighbourhood archetypes in Stuttgart, Germany, using typical AC 11/22 kW charging patterns likely dominated by battery electric vehicles (BEVs). Over 73,000 AC charging events from 248 public charging points were included and charging power, charging duration and electricity consumption assessed for each. Applied to the Stuttgart case study, the methodology reveals a dominant early-evening charging pattern in residential areas, peaking around 6:00 p.m., whereas commercial and industrial NATs show increased activity during morning hours. During daytime, all NATs show moderate charging metrics, possibly indicating frequent ’opportunity charging’ that might be more linked to parking rather than active energy demand. In contrast, above-average values at night and in the early mornings may reflect ’necessity charging’. Residential NATs share broadly similar high-level patterns, though some differences emerge that plausibly relate to building density, population structure, and, in particular, the local availability of private charging infrastructure. Nevertheless, these NAT-specific findings should be interpreted as case-study evidence rather than nationally representative results, given the sample size and geographic scope of the underlying dataset, particularly for less-represented archetypes.The main contribution of this work is therefore the methodology itself: a transparent, reproducible workflow for generating generic NAT-level charging pattern curves, differentiated by weekday and weekend, that can be transferred to other urban areas with comparable structural characteristics. The resulting profiles for Stuttgart illustrate the approach’s practical value for expansion planning of public charging infrastructure and provide a starting point for stakeholders, including infrastructure providers, planning authorities, and electricity distribution grid operators, while further validation with broader, multi-city datasets is needed to assess generalisability across NAT types.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Journal of Urban Mobility, 2026 · DOI ↗