With more than 83,000 operational charging points, France is one of the best performers in Europe, just behind the Netherlands. The government is on track to achieve its goal of 100,000 terminals by summer 2023.
With the ban on the sale of new thermal cars set by the European Union by 2035, the importance of having an extensive charging network is paramount.
On this point and this is good news, France has nothing to be ashamed of compared to other European countries. Indeed, Power2Drive Europe, the organizer of the future Munich electromobility show (to be held from June 14 to 16, 2023), has made an inventory of the charging offer on the Old Continent.
To do this, the organization has compiled official data provided by the European Alternative Fuels Observatory (EFAO) of the European Commission. So, at the end of 2022 in Europe there were no less than 450,478 charging points (all powers combined).
France n°2 for charging in Europe
While this figure may seem encouraging at first glance, it should unfortunately be noted that 60% of the European recharge top-up offer is actually concentrated in three countriesnamely the Netherlands, France and Germany:
- Netherlands: 111,821 charging points
- France: 83,317 charging points
- Germany: 82,609 charging points
Then comes Italy in 4th place, with 30,787 charging points, followed by Spain (29,539 charging points). Be careful, however, if we dwell on the fast charging offer, either terminals with a power of 50 kW or morethe classification is quite different.
In this area, it is Germany, which dominates with 12,833 DC terminals. This is significantly more than in France with 8,220 terminals, than in Spain (5,013) or in Italy (3,295) and the Netherlands (2,754).
Great efforts to be made on fast charging
Moreover, Power2Drive Europe expresses its concerns on this particular point. As you may know, Europe voted a new measure at the end of March 2023 called AFIR. It aims to intensify the efforts of member countries on infrastructure for alternative fuels, with ambitious objectives: a fast charging station every 60 km on the main European roads by 2025.
To achieve this, it will therefore be necessary to exceed the milestone of one million available terminals. And again, the European Commission is aiming for 3.5 million by 2030. For now, we are still far, very far from reaching these figures, since Europe currently has only 47,819 stations DC charging. Significant efforts therefore remain to be made to meet these commitments. Remember that in France, the government recently announced that it is on track to reach the milestone of 100,000 terminals in France by the summer of 2023.
Source : Power2Drive Europe
