Charging infrastructure in Europe
More and more people are opting for an EV and we at LeasePlan can only applaud that! Electric driving is comfortable, offers a pleasant driving experience and is, of course, good for the environment. Still, one big question arises: what is the state of the charging infrastructure in Europe? This is important if you want to take a road trip with your EV with peace of mind. We can already tell you: a large part of the European road network is already equipped with sufficient charging facilities.
Towards a climate-neutral Europe by 2050, the EU Green Deal, the European Parliament passed a law in July 2023. This law aims to install fast-charging stations every 60 kilometres on the Trans-European Network, Europe's main road network, by 2026. Ambitious? Definitely. Feasible? Absolutely! Yet some countries, especially in Eastern Europe, may have to shift up a gear.
Northern Europe: EV Valhalla Norway ranks number 1 in our 2023 LeasePlan EV Readiness Index (*) for good reason. The country has over 22 000 charging points, most located in the south of the country. Sweden also has enough facilities with almost 32 000 electric charging points so you can take your EV on a road trip without any worries. Denmark is also the biggest riser in 2023, with a total of over 18 000 charging stations. That's about a third more than their infrastructure exactly a year earlier. Driving north via Germany? No problem, there are no less than 125 000 charging stations there today. (*) To score the EV Readiness Index, we look at 3 key factors: the maturity of the EV market (including plug-in hybrids), the maturity of the EV infrastructure (such as the availability of public charging points and fast chargers) and the total cost of ownership (TCO) of an EV (taking into account government incentives and energy prices, among others).
The Netherlands is EU's primus The European Union currently has more than 600 000 charging stations. This does not include Norway, as it is not a member of the European Union. The top student in the EU is the Netherlands, accounting for some 144 000 charging points. In 2022, the Netherlands set a remarkable record in the European Union by installing about 14 charging points per registered EV, the highest of any EU country in that year.
Flanders investing heavily, still work to be done in Wallonia Belgium currently has some 37 000 public charging stations and many more would be added in the future . Currently there are on average 5 charging stations per registered EV, a good score! Flanders in particular is investing heavily in charging infrastructure. The Flemish government is also making the case that there will be as many as 35,000 charging stations by 2025. Through subsidies, the Flemish government also reimburses 20% of the costs for companies that install a semi-public charging station. This subsidy is a huge success. However, Wallonia still has a lot of work to do if they want to achieve their ambition of 12,000 charging points by 2025.
Travelling to southern Europe with an EV You can also drive to France with your electric vehicle without any problems. La Douce France today has almost 110 000 charging points and this number continues to grow rapidly. In Portugal, too, you can drive relaxed with your EV. There you will find over 7 000 charging points, so you can easily charge your electric vehicle. Italy has almost 40 000 charging points. Driving your EV to Spain? No problemo! Today, Spain has almost 30 000 public EV charging points. In recent years, the Spanish government has made huge investments to make traffic more sustainable. For instance, they want to have more than 3 million electric cars on the road by 2030, which of course means there will have to be a bunch of new charging points.
Into the mountains without worries! Switzerland and Austria also have good figures. Austria has over 20 000 charging stations, Switzerland almost 13 000. In the mountains, you also don't have to panic if your range drops quickly and there isn't an immediate charging point nearby. Via regenerative braking, you can recover a lot of energy on descents. If you want to know how colleague Stef did this in the Austrian mountains, read the blog about his road trip through 5 European countries.
Why not even as far as Eastern Europe? There is still work to be done in Eastern Europe, especially in the Baltic States. Lithuania currently has 1,300 charging stations, while Latvia (1,100) and Estonia (280) have even fewer. Croatia has only 1,200 charging stations and Romania around 2,600. Yet it is certainly not impossible to take your EV on a road trip in Eastern Europe, as 2 of our LeasePlan colleagues proved. Bojan went on a road trip with his EV through former Yugoslavia and made trips to Croatia and Serbia. David also made a successful trip with his EV. He went to Romania and was on the road with his family for about 18 days.
