Highway charging has exploded in France this summer

This summer, electric vehicles began traveling in France. The number of charging sessions has exploded on the highway aires, but there was no capacity overdemand.

In July, energy provider TotalEnergies noticed a strong increase (+127%) in charging sessions on highways and expressways’ fast-charger sites. During the same period, the number of charging points doubled.

Between 1 and 18 August, the number of charging sessions doubled compared to last year, and the number of kilowatts charged increased by 110%, indicating also the longer distances traveled.

More expensive

“In general, charging goes well,” says David Maclet, owner of a Kia Niro and traveling frequently on the highways. “We’ve also noticed that charging along highways is significantly more expensive, between 0.49 and 0.59 euros per kWh. At home, it’s easily 20 euro cents less.” That’s the same situation for ICE cars, where gasoline or diesel is much more expensive in the aires along highways than in the towns or villages.

That’s why some operators, such as Tesla, install themselves outside the highway, near the exits. However, many people don’t like to waste time getting off and on the highways again, and that’s what the highway exploitation companies are counting on.

Provider Ionity has noticed an increase of 70% in charging sessions. “We noticed that there can be waiting queues at very high traffic density,” says Torsten Kiedel, CEO at Ionity, “but in our stations, we haven’t noticed long queues this summer.”

Adequate spread

Also, in France, there are regions where charging points are still hard to find, but the country is one of the best when one sees the proportion of charging points related to the number of EVs already on the road. According to the cabinet Roland Berger, during the first half year of 2024, 17.4% of the cars registered were electric.

Lominat Eyasu, who charges his car on the A1 between Paris and Lille and works for the World Health Organization (WHO), regrets that the number of charging points is still too low. “But it is already far better than a few months ago when it still was necessary to travel 100 km to find a charging spot.”