  Electric vehicles may dominate motorized transport in the next decade, yet
the impact of the collective dynamics of electric mobility on long-range
traffic flow is still largely unknown. We demonstrate a type of congestion that
arises if charging infrastructure is limited or electric vehicle density is
high. This congestion emerges solely through indirect interactions at charging
infrastructure by queue-avoidance behavior that - counterintuitively - induces
clustering of occupied charging stations and phase separation of the flow into
free and congested stations. The resulting congestion waves always propagate
forward in the direction of travel, in contrast to typically
backward-propagating congestion waves known from traditional traffic jams.
These results may guide the planning and design of charging infrastructure and
decision support applications in the near future.
