EU electric charging points booming but not across the board

Chief Europe Correspondent
Source: ChargeUp Europe

The European Union’s public electric charging infrastructure has been growing quickly, but the adoption rate varies greatly across member states.

That’s according to a report last week by ChargeUp Europe, the organization representing the electric vehicle infrastructure industry in Europe.

It found that public charging stations have grown nearly 600% between 2015 and 2021. Public charging points are those found along highways or on the street and are different from private charging options like those at home or work.

Overall, more than 330,000 publicly accessible charging stations were operating in the EU at the end of 2021. This translates into an average of 73 charging points per 100,000 inhabitants. But, as the chart above shows, this is very unevenly distributed across countries.

More than half of the EU’s public charging points are in the Netherlands (122,000) and Germany (65,000), according to the report. That translates into almost 700 electric charging points per 100,000 inhabitants in the Netherlands versus just four in Greece.

“There is the great risk that countries with a high proportion of charging points today stay ahead of the others—entrenching a two-speed Europe divide,” the report states.