Georgia:

Hello, and welcome back to Watt’s Up with Energy, a gridX podcast. I'm your host, Georgia Knapp, Content Manager here at gridX. Before we start, I want to make one addendum from our last episode. This podcast will actually be coming to you bi-weekly and not weekly like I previously stated. So, that's one new episode every two weeks, four episodes per season.

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All right, and with that, let's get started.

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This episode, I'm joined once again by Solution Engineer Lars Rheinemann.

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Lars, welcome back.

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Lars:

Welcome. Thanks for having me again.

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Georgia:

What can you tell us about the current state of charging infrastructure in Europe specifically?

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Lars:

Yeah, so from my point of view, Europe has the potential to be a global leader in the charging infrastructure because we already have the regulation in place that we will ban combustion engines in 2035.

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But of course, as car manufacturers will try to get all of their petrol cars out of their portfolio as soon as possible, we will see a bigger increase in electric vehicles end of this decade.

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And when you look at the number of charging points, we increased the charging points inside of the EU by 360% in the time between 2020 and 2023.

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You have to keep in mind, there also was COVID during this time, so this slowed down a lot of things.

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So, I see there is a huge potential on increasing electric mobility in the EU still, and we will see a lot of changes in the next years.

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Georgia:

Are we seeing a higher growth of slow or fast chargers?

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Lars:

So, at the moment, we're seeing a higher growth of fast chargers or DC chargers, as they are often called. That's just natural because we need more fast charging stations beside the highway.

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But of course, the AC chargers, I wouldn't like to call them slow chargers because they do their job pretty good and they do what they should do.

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Those are chargers that normally have a power between 7 kilowatts and 22 kilowatts. There are still some older models, monophasic models that charge even less.

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But the models between 7.4 and 22 kilowatts are the most important ones here. And they still have a share of about 74% all over the market. But they dropped from over 80% in the time between 2020 and 2023. Whereas the DC chargers increased their share up to 16% in the same time. So, we clearly see that we still have a lot of AC chargers, but just a share of DC chargers is getting bigger.

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And of course you will never have the situation that you have more DC chargers than AC chargers because the AC charger is the typical charger you would use at home, because it's the right charger to use if you have long periods of time and just want to charge your car during this time.

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And we also saw that when we look at countries like Greece, maybe not the country you would expect to be like a leading country in e-mobility, that they have a huge increase in DC chargers as well.

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So, they kind of skipped the whole part of building up a lot of AC chargers. So, they are really increasing their share of DC chargers.

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So, all over Europe, there's like a feeling that we need to invest into this infrastructure right now and build up a lot of stations to make it possible to travel with UAV across all borders in Europe.

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Georgia:

So, Lars, what are your thoughts on this? Do we have enough chargers in Europe?

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Lars:

I would say it's a mixed picture. So, we have made a lot of effort into building up a network close to the autobahn, close to urban areas, and we are seeing that it's not unusual to see charging stations in the streets.

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So, if you walk around in Munich, for example, you now see charging stations, battery electric vehicles plugged in there.

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So, it's not an uncommon sight anymore. Same goes for the typical parking lots close to the autobahn. There's often times a fast charging station. But at the same time, we still have those charging deserts in Germany or all over Europe. So, we have a lot of rural areas where there is just not enough charging points to be considered as a safe place to go with your EV without getting stuck somewhere. So, we have to invest way more in rural areas. And a similar picture can be nearly done for every country in the EU. 

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In the Netherlands, we have the highest share in the western parts of the country. Here you have to say that’s still – the last place in the Netherlands is higher than in a lot of other European countries. So, the Dutch are doing a really good job in building a lot of public charging infrastructure or charging infrastructure at all.

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But we just need to make sure that we get everyone in the mix here, that everybody who wants to drive an electric vehicle can get access to a charging station where they need to charge their car. And that's also the big question. We need to check which kind of charges.

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So, if it's public charging stations or private charging stations, suit the different areas in Europe best. So, if some areas are good with only having private charging stations because everybody has their own household and they are maybe not very touristic regions or where we need public charging stations, so people just can get around in those areas.

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Georgia:

And when you say public and private charging stations, is there anything that differentiates those besides the fact that one is publicly available and one is privately available?

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Lars:

Yeah, so private charging stations are, as the name suggests, owned by a private person, so they're mostly AC chargers installed for a single household or in a parking garage with one user only using this parking station or one user having to control over this charging station.

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And public charging stations could be more seen as equivalent to a guest station, so you want to get there, you want to charge your car, you want to charge it as fast as possible, and you pay for the energy that you use.

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That's why high-power chargers, DC chargers, are mostly public charging stations. And somewhere in the middle of this category is the semi-public charging. That's something that's also on the rise.

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So, we have a lot of companies equipping their parking lots with charging stations, so their employees can charge their cars while they are at work. Or they can charge their fleet cars while they are at work or while they are on break. So, also there, we see an increase in e-mobility. Because when you're talking about companies providing charging points for their employees, it's also that only 50% of the EVs registered in Germany right now are owned by private persons. So, it's a huge share of fleet cars that are provided by your employer or that are part of a company fleet for just the use of work. So, it's not that every electric vehicle is owned by a private person and only can be charged in their own household.

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Georgia:

That's interesting that it's 50% of the EVs in Europe are owned privately, and then 50% are actually owned, I don't know if you'd say publicly, but owned by a business and just kind of loaned out to their employees.

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In our Charge Report, we actually mention a report by StatZone that 70% of EV charging in Europe happens at home or at work. So, not necessarily at one of the big stations along the Autobahn or even the ones that you see along the sidewalks. And so these are places at home and at work are places where drivers have a lower output and longer charge durations, which equals to lower costs.

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In 2022, nearly 80% of residential chargers were sold in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and France. And France and the Nordics actually have some of the highest shares of workplace chargers.

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In your opinion, which should Europe prioritize more public or private chargers?

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Lars:

In my opinion, that's also a little bit of a mixed picture because for residents, especially in rural areas, it's home chargers just provide the ease and the option to charge your car at home, something you cannot do with a petrol car. So, it's a new opportunity that you have.

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And in some areas, it might also be the only proper option to charge your car close to where you live. And as mentioned in the last episode, they also provide house owners with another kind of flexibility because you can use it. You can charge your car during times where prices are cheap or you can use options like bi-directional charging to make the most out of your electric vehicle.

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But for those living in apartments and in Europe, that's nearly 50% of the population, they mostly don't have their own parking spot or they are parking in a lot of quite old garages where they don't own the parking spot. So, it's hard to get a private charger there.

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And for them, like public charging infrastructure, there's just no way around it because that's the only way for them to make e-mobility work for them so that they are getting rid of their petrol car if they have one.

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And also public charging stations also enable people to travel across the country and across borders, because whenever you outreach the range of your electric wheels charge, you just need a public charging station to make use of your car outside of the range of your household.

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And the next point is that public charging stations can be used by shared vehicles as always. And again, there's the thing that when we enable more shared mobility to be used with electric vehicles, then we can tackle the point, which we also just briefly touched in the last episodes, that we need to make sure that our cities are not becoming overcrowded with cars. So, that's something that we also can tackle with public charging stations.

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Georgia:

And as someone who's been involved in the mobility sector for a long time, do you see any solution to this?

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Lars:

So, we should just build those charge points where we really need them, and just enable people to use modern forms of mobility, like public transport, ride sharing, or park and ride parking lots, and maybe put up the charging stations on those parking lots.

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And at the same time, we need to enable all the public transport systems to be run with electric mobility. So, of course, they need to charge as well. So, here we have a real huge need of private charging stations, but also high power charging stations because we need to charge the buses that get us around town as well.

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And then we would have the opportunity to switch our individual mobility to e-mobility without making the error to say again, okay, we just build one more lane and it will fix it because we can also switch the whole mobility system around, making it more accessible for everyone, making more use of public forms of transport, ride sharing, bike lanes, and still have people from outside of the city included because they can get maybe to, not to the city center with their car, but they can use their car until a park and ride parking lot and get a decent connection into the city center and travel around the city with ease and eco-friendly.

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Georgia:

Are there any incentives or policies in Europe that support the balanced growth of the charging infrastructure?

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Lars:

So, we have in a lot of countries in Europe initiatives from the government to increase the share of high-power chargers, especially close to highways or autobahn, like the Deutschland Netz in Germany, which is a huge incentive or huge initiative to build more fast charging stations across the highway or close to the highway so people can do long distance traveling with their EVs.

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And then of course, we have a lot of incentives to buy EVs in a lot of countries. They are changing quite fast, and normally they are limited to certain time frames. But at this point in time, it's still needed to get more fundings for EVs because EVs are still quite expensive. So, a lot of people can't afford to buy an EV and still keep their old car running because it's for them just cheaper at the moment and they can just afford an EV. So, it's really needed to have a lot of funding to incentive the buy of an EV.

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And also in private places, we have a lot of incentives to install your own charger at home because that's also an investment because oftentimes you have to call an electrician to set it up, all the work loads that needs to be paid is also something that a lot of people think that is it's quite a huge investment and they don't want to do it. But with the right funding, we also can get this done.

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Georgia:

In your opinion, which European countries are the current leaders in charging infrastructure?

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Lars:

So, I would say in Western Europe, it's the Netherlands because they have a lot of charging points per capita and then of course the Nordics. So, Sweden and Norway are standing out right here.

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They are mostly, I guess, it's not the first time this year that they are the leaders in charging points per capita and the capacity. So, those are the countries that are really doing a good job right now. 

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Georgia:

And then you mentioned Greece earlier. Are there any other European countries that might surprise people that are doing pretty well with charging infrastructure?

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Lars:

Portugal is standing out. So, they did quite a good job. They're still not a front runner of e-mobility, but compared to other Southern Europe countries, they did a great job. So, they have a lot of EVs sold at the moment. So, they increased their share of EVs all over registered cars in Portugal in the last years. And they're right now on a good path to increase this and could maybe also be a role model for other European countries that are not really adopted electric mobility right now.

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Georgia:

And then what countries might be falling behind?

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Lars:

Eastern Europe is still a bit falling behind at the moment. But also there we see some initiatives to get this going again. It's even more centered about the economically strong areas there.

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And then when we talk about Western European countries, it's mostly Spain and Ireland that are a bit falling behind. So, there's not that many options for people to charge their electric vehicle in public places. So, a lot of people just don't get an EV because it's not a big thing there at the moment.

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Georgia:

What is a key bit of information you think listeners should take away?

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Lars:

I would say that we're now in Europe at a tripping point in our transformation of our whole mobility system. So, e-mobility is a huge part of the transformation, but it's not everything.

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So, we need to make sure that we just get everyone in the same boat, transform our whole system in a way that everybody has access to the right form of mobility, to an eco-friendly and clean form of mobility, and we just can move one of the biggest fears or one of the biggest challenges in fighting climate change, and we just get shit done here.

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Georgia:

Great way to end that. Thanks again, Lars, for joining me. We will be speaking again in the next episode about the charging infrastructure in Europe, specifically where it's headed.

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If you'd like to learn more about the world of renewable energy or energy management systems, be sure to check out our website, gridx.ai, where we produce regular blogs and glossaries about the subject.

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You can also follow us on LinkedIn, or on Twitter and Instagram @getgridX.

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