The report carried out by Charge Europe highlights the road that still remains to be traveled in Europe to provide the electric car with an optimal infrastructure for its consolidation. These are the numbers that prove it.
Charge Europe, organization that represents the industry of the charging for electric vehicles in Europehas produced an exhaustive report detailing the current situation of the electric vehicle in the Old Continent.
And the summary that can be made is that there is a lot of inequality and that the administrations have a long way to go if they want to see their policies endorsed with facts.
If the trend is confirmed, a two-speed Europe will take hold
At the end of 2021, Europe had registered nearly four million plug-in cars (BEVs and PHEVs). However, the total number of existing public access charging points in the European Union is barely 330,000 chargers.
This gives an average of 73 chargers per 100,000 inhabitants, a ratio that only eight EU countries exceed. However, the data that best reflects the existing inequality is the following: more than 50% of charging points are in the Netherlands (122,000) and Germany (65,000).
Existing charging points in Europe
Currently, an electric car can be charged at three main types of electrical energy suppliers depending on its point of installation:
- private: households and communities
- limited public access: companies, shops and charging stations
- public access: streets, highways and highways
The report focuses on the latter, which are accessible to all audiences and without restrictions of any kind. This document shows that there are inequalities between the north and west on the one hand and the south and east on the other.
As a result, there is a great risk that countries with a high proportion of charging points will remain ahead of the rest. If confirmed, this will strengthen a European two-speed division.
On the other hand, the report also shows that most of the recharging points installed in the community territory are from lazy load, with a very small number of fast or ultra-fast face systems. More than 90% of all publicly accessible charging infrastructures are AC charging stations, mostly 22 kW or less.
Type of charging points in the European Union
- Alternating Current (AC) less than 22kw: 87%
- Direct Current (DC) less than 100kw: 6%
- alternating current of between 22 and 43 kW: 4%
- HPC (ultra-fast charging) more than 100kw: 3%
Countries with a high density of charging points tend to prioritize AC chargers. On the contrary, the countries of Central, Eastern or Southern Europe (eg Poland, Czech Republic or Spain) have the highest national quotas for DC charging, despite having a comparatively smaller number of charging points in total.
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Top 5 countries by type of recharge installed:
- Alternating current: Luxembourg, Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden
- DC: Poland, Czech Republic, Spain, Portugal and Slovenia
- HPC: Poland, Germany, Czech Republic, France and Ireland
Some of the countries with the smallest electric vehicle fleets have the higher installed load capacity. This is because they have a high number of chargers relative to a smaller electrified fleet.
The reason for this uneven distribution is the uneven fleet of electric vehicles in the EU. “To avoid a large gap in public charging infrastructure between member states, it is important to implement a tailored approach through the introduction of mandatory minimum targets in the infrastructure regulation»notes the ChargeUp report.
«The objectives of the electric vehicle charging infrastructure must be linked to the percentage of electric vehicles in the total fleet of passenger vehicles in a country.
“There should be higher targets for countries with low percentage of BEV and PHEV fleets, as well as lower targets for countries with higher rate of adoption»expands this body.
“These targets must be reduced according to the share of electric vehicles in the fleet. After reaching a share of electric vehicles of 7.5% for the total fleetthe market should already operate organically so that these infrastructure objectives are no longer necessary, ”he points out.
Distribution of electric vehicles by country
- Norway: 3.7%
- Netherlands: 3.2%
- Denmark: 2.1%
- Luxembourg: 2%
- Belgium: 1.8%
- Finland: 1.5%
- France: 1.3%
- Germany: 1.2%
- Portugal: 1.2%
- Austria: 1.1%
- United Kingdom: 0.9%
- Spain: 0.4%
- Lithuania: 0.4%
- Slovenia: 0.4%
Procedures and bureaucracy
One of the biggest bottlenecks is the time it can take to go from send a request to connect to the network to the point where the station can operate commercially. The precise times vary across member states and between distribution system operators, but in any case it is a widespread challenge.
The lack of transparency in the deadlines and milestones of the process, as well as the problems of municipal permits add complexity, costs and uncertainty for the deployment of the charging infrastructure.
“The current system is not well suited to the rapid deployment of the charging infrastructure needed to meet EU climate targets and legal changes are necessary to solve this”claim ChargeUp
Up to 3 years to install a charging point
The industry faces many procedural hurdles and this situation is especially challenging on the roads of some countries because the power distribution network is not well developedthe permitting process is very complex and is not harmonized throughout the territory of a country, and the required construction is often expensive.
The first thing to do is identify a suitable location. Afterwards, it is necessary to guarantee the rights to use the land and only then is it feasible to send a request for the connection at the desired power level.
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The electricity distributor will inform about the level of low voltage power (LV) available. If it is not accepted by the installer, the installer will receive the terms for a medium voltage (MV) connection.
Once the contract with the electricity distributor is finalized, in the case of a low voltage connection, the wait can be up to 18 months. Costs vary depending on the connection, but a medium voltage transformer station costs between 40,000 and 200,000 euros.
The complexity of the design process and its construction, as well as the time it will take, will depend on the distance to the grid connection point, the conclusion of land use agreements with owners whose land cables will pass through the land (which may time-consuming, require new designs, and be expensive), permits required from local authoritiesenvironmental regulations and, finally, the construction required.
The process is not the same in all countries and depends a lot on the knowledge and experience of the official processing the file. Generally, medium voltage connections can take 2-3 years from agreement contract to completion. All this uncertainty makes investing less attractive.
This is how public chargers are used
In general, the number of charging sessions per day, as well as the energy charged per session increases with higher load capacity. Although the drop in DC charging of more than 250 kW can be explained by the limited number of vehicles capable of charging under such conditions.
- The energy charged per session is approximately 50% higher for CC (100 kW) and 100% higher for DC (101-250 kW) than for AC charging.
- Technology and charging capacity do not affect the time frame for charging: more than half of charging sessions take place during the dayabout a third in the afternoon, and only 12% at night.
In summary, Europe still has a long way to go and, although sales of electric cars are growing at a fast pace, the infrastructure that must accompany them is, for the moment, one of the brakes for its definitive consolidation as the first option in the market. .