Abstract
The world is rapidly advancing towards the electrification of mobility owing to the substan-
tial benefits of emission reduction. Adhering to international trends and environmental obligations,
the Government of Pakistan (GOP) also intended to adopt 30@30 plug-in-electric vehicles (PEVs)
across the country, which implies 30 percent of new sales will be of PEVs until 2030. Despite the
policy guidelines introduced by the GOP as well as incentives for vehicle fleet electrification and
indigenization, the foremost challenge is the lack of a PEV charging infrastructure placement plan
for the country. In this regard, an optimal locality map for level-3 or direct current fast charging
(DCFC) stations’ installation is proposed, considering traffic volume, service area, and local grid
facility while ensuring the availability of charging stations across all major networks of the country.
The area of focus for this is National Highway 5, known as N5, and the Motorway-2 (M2) Network.
The paper also provides insights into the techno-economic analysis of the proposed charging station
installation spots. The results are extremely encouraging and reveal the proposed PEV charging
stations under observation on the highways from Lahore to Islamabad consumed an electricity share
of 3 MW–0.13 MW based on minimum to maximum traffic volume scenarios, respectively. The study
is impactful and ultimately paves a way forward for the aggravation of the EV market share by
considering the initial investment and a payback period of 7 months. With the help of this study,
better planning in terms of EV penetration size and its requirement for public DCFC stations can be
implemented, and the exact recipe for the growth of the supportive industry with the pace of PEVs’
perforation can be executed.