German service stations must now offer EV chargers by law

Germany is about to become the first country in Europe to introduce a new law mandating that at least 80 per cent of its service stations offer electric vehicle fast-chargers as part of the country’s plan to offer a million EV charging stations by 2030.

The bold new legislation was proposed last week at the IAA Mobility exhibition by Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who according to Reuters stipulated the service station chargers would all have to be at least 150kW units to maximise charging efficiency and backlog mitigation.

No timeframe for the mandate has been given yet, but Scholz reportedly said Germany would be the “first country in Europe” to introduce such a law within a matter of weeks, thereby making “range anxiety a thing of the past for EV drivers”.

Germany presently has about 90,000 public EV chargers online, meaning this new mandate alone will see the tally tip past 100,000 by the time the new stations are live, given the country had 14,453 service stations as of August 25.

The compares to approximately 7000 servos in Australia and 2392 public EV chargers as of December last year.

Thousands of new chargers have either been added and/or promised since then, supporting the rapid uptake of EVs in Australia – in part thanks to various government incentives and the continued arrival of more new affordable models.

Almost 57,000 new EVs have been delivered so far this year, along with 59,593 hybrids, marking a huge 291.2 per cent year-on-year upswing for EVs to August 2023, while sales of the petrol-electric tech championed by Toyota have only increased by 8.9 per cent over the same period.

For everything you auto know about EVs, listen to carsales' Watts Under the Bonnet: the electric car podcast

Join the conversation at 

our Facebook page

Or email us at 

editor@carsales.com.au