Abstract This paper addresses the modelling and simulation of a battery charging infrastructure for electric vehicles, with the objective of pro-actively scheduling the charging of up to fifty vehicles so as not to overcharge the electrical network. Benefits of having the charging stations differ (as much as possible while satisfying end-user requirements) battery charging for those hours when electricity consumption is otherwise low include rendering electricity consumption more uniform along the day. A multi-agent system was used to design a distributed, modular, coordinated and collaborative multi-agent management system for this infrastructure. Simulation results show the effectiveness of this approach under the conditions of four real-life scenarios.