Design and operation of charging infrastructure for commercial electric vehicle fleets: a multidimensional review of modelling and technology trends

The increasing pressure to decarbonise transport has sparked the interest of different stakeholders in renewing vehicle fleets with battery electric vehicles (BEVs), supported by falling battery costs and an expanding charging infrastructure (CI) ecosystem. However, commercial fleet electrification faces barriers including payload loss, limited tailored CI, high upfront costs, grid constraints and the absence of standardized methodologies to align complex logistics operations with BEV integration. Literature on commercial electric vehicles (CEVs) remains fragmented and lacks a holistic perspective. This paper provides a comprehensive review of enabling technologies, models and methodologies for the design and operation of CI, introducing a framework to classify CEV use cases and assess energy flexibility in time, location and power. It critically examines coordinated smart charging strategies and their role in reducing total cost of ownership (TCO) through behind- and beyond-the-meter opportunities. The review identifies three critical gaps in existing research: (1) technological and economic limitations, (2) shortcomings in CI design and operation, and (3) inadequacies in forecasting techniques, open data availability, and energy–logistics interoperability. Furthermore, promising future research directions are proposed such as the development of a Fleet Energy Management System (FEMS), the massification of logistics charging hubs and the enhancement of the TCO analysis by accounting for energy-logistics flexibility.