Electric Vehicle Charging Station Infrastructure on the Basis of Provinces in Turkey: Analysis through the Metrics

The fact that fossil fuels are exhaustible and harmful to the environment, the goals of constituting a sustainable and cleaner environment, and developments in battery technologies have led to a tendency towards electric vehicles instead of the vehicles which have traditional internal combustion engines working with fossil fuels. Especially in the last five years, electric vehicle (EV) sales have increased, and this increase is expected to continue increasing in the coming years. The increasing number of electric vehicles leads to the need for EV charging stations. To make strategic plans, to guide investors and to provide the appropriate infrastructure for the electric vehicle customers, the infrastructure of electric vehicle charging stations in each region needs to be analyzed in detail. In this study, the quantitative situation of the electric vehicle charging station infrastructure on the basis of provinces in Turkey as of the end of 2020 is discussed and two new metrics which use to evaluate EV charging station infrastructure are proposed. In this context, the EV charging station status is presented with tables and infographic maps through the metrics in the literature used in the evaluation of the EV charging station infrastructure and the metrics proposed in this study. 81 provinces of Turkey are compared and presented in terms of EV charging station infrastructure through the metrics. It is foreseen that the obtained and presented findings in this study will be beneficial to electric vehicle customers, electric vehicle charging station investors, the government and other public institutions that could be developed the strategy to increase the proliferation of electric vehicles. In addition, this publication might be used as a reference study to track the pace of improvements in the EV charging station infrastructure and to compare the improvements with 2020.