ACEA: ‘42% of EV chargers concentrated in only two countries’

The Netherlands remains the country with the highest share of EV-charging infrastructure, with 111 821  chargers or 23,3% of the total number in the EU on its territory. Germany comes in second, with 87 674 public chargers, 18,3% of the total.

Together they stand for 41,6% of the EU’s total charging infrastructure today, scattered over only 10% of the surface. The figures come from the European Alternative Fuels Observatory (EAFO) and are the latest for 2022, ACEA says. The car manufacturers federation won’t miss an opportunity to make its point charging infrastructure is lagging.

But the same figures show that in the last two years, the number of chargers has nearly quadrupled to a total of 479 392, with 421 901 AC chargers and 57 491 DC chargers. In the first quarter of 2020, we talked about only 132 386 AC chargers and 11 986 DC chargers.

Still, the primary concern of ACEA is that these chargers are almost all concentrated in two or three countries if we consider the top three with France (83 317 chargers) added. Spain (34 380) and Italy (37 186) are considerably slower in taking up EV infrastructure.

Seventy times more chargers than Romania

But there, EV market shares are still low, with 8,7% (Italy) and 9,6% (Spain) compared by, for instance, the Netherlands with 34,5% or Sweden with 56,1%. To make its point about the uneven distribution of infrastructure within EU27, ACEA gives the example of the Netherlands – the country with the highest share of infrastructure – which has almost 70 times more charging points than Romania (1 658), which is roughly seven times bigger.

Most of the eastern and some of the southern countries are lagging behind today, with Latvia (660), Lithuania (477), Estonia (300), Cyprus (69), and Malta (13) at the very tail of the peloton.

Belgium, with 24 129 chargers and an EV market share in 2022 of 26,5%, isn’t doing that bad, considering it is one of the smallest countries. But no match for the Netherlands.