Charging services play an important role in encouraging the growth of the electric freight vehicle (EFV) market. Understanding charging strategies and their influence on charging behavior is crucial in the deployment of charging services. Unfortunately, existing charging strategy definitions and types are incoherent and incomplete. This conceptual paper synthesizes the perspectives found in literature on the charging strategy concept, and provides a definition based on Orlikowski’s structurational model of technology. A two-level charging strategy typology is proposed. The first distinguishes between decision-making modes: schedule- or trigger-based decisions. The second identifies when and where charging is used during a vehicle operating cycle. The result is three schedule-based charging strategies: downtime, opportunity, and intrusive charging, and one trigger-based emergency charging. The selection of strategy depends on the EFV operations, the availability of charging systems and services, as well as the driver behaviour. The influence of the strategy on enhancing the EFV, the carrier operations and business model is discussed. Charging behaviour, especially in location and timing, is shown to be strongly dependent on the strategy. While downtime charging is considered the default strategy, carriers should employ a variety of complementary strategies to enhance the capability of their vehicles and improve the financial viability of the operations. Carriers should also have an emergency charging strategy on hand in case of unforeseen situations.

The high costs of using electric vehicles (EVs) is hindering wide-spread adoption of an EV-centric decarbonisation strategy for urban freight transport. Four opportunity charging (OC) strategies—during breaks and shift changes, during loading activity, during unloading activity, or while driving on highways—are evaluated towards reducing EV costs. The study investigates the effect of OC on the lifecycle costs and carbon dioxide emissions of four cases of different urban freight transport operations. Using a parametric vehicle model, the weight and battery capacity of operationally suitable fleets were calculated for ten scenarios (i.e., one diesel vehicle scenario, two EV scenarios without OC, and seven EV scenarios with four OC strategies and two charging technology types). A linearized energy consumption model sensitive to vehicle load was used to calculate the fuel and energy used by fleets for the transport operations. OC was found to significantly reduce lifecycle costs, and without any strong negative influence on carbon dioxide emissions. Other strong influences on lifecycle costs are the use of inductive technology, extension of service lifetime, and reduction of battery price. Other strong influences on carbon dioxide emissions are the use of inductive technology and the emissions factors of electricity production.