Germany launches construction of fast-charging motorway network for trucks

Germany is starting to build its planned national network of fast-chargers for electric trucks along its motorways, a key step for decarbonising road freight, the country’s transport ministry said.

“The rise of e-mobility is gathering pace!” Steffen Bilger, Germany’s transport minister (CDU) said, adding the government will provide around one billion euros for the network, and launch the installation of fast chargers at 124 unstaffed service stations. He said the network will eventually comprise around 4,200 charging points at around 350 locations along the motorways in total, both for quick top-ups and for overnight charging.

Charging infrastructure remains a core obstacle for electrifying freight transport in Germany. Half of its logistics companies said in a poll published in February that a lack of public charging points is a reason why they have not yet bought electric trucks. Around one third of hauliers said they plan to use electric trucks by 2030, while 77 percent assumed that electric trucks will be standard or at least widely in use by that year, according to the survey from think tank Öko-Institut.

Thanks to rapid improvements and cost reductions of batteries, battery-electric trucks are now widely seen as the winning solution to decarbonise road transport. Only a few years ago, many people still doubted that this approach would prevail over overhead power lines or fuel cells. 

Many of Europe’s truckmakers have also been hesitant to fully commit to the technology. As a result, they have now fallen behind US and Chinese companies, which are set to gain over a quarter of Europe’s electric truck market by 2030, clean mobility NGO Transport & Environment warned last week. 

T&E said that maintaining ambition of the EU’s emission limits for trucks was critical to EU manufacturers remaining market leaders. But earlier this week, EU truckmakers sought a 3-year delay to the EU’s 2030 CO₂ targets, citing insufficient charging networks and high energy costs.

Under current European Union rules, manufacturers in ​the bloc must cut CO2 emissions of new ​heavy-duty vehicles by 43 percent in 2030 compared to 2025 levels. But even though the take-up of electric trucks has gathered pace recently, only 2.4 percent of new heavy-duty vehicles are zero-emission, far below the level required for the EU target.

These developments closely mirror events in the car market in recent years. Europe’s carmakers were hesitant in the switch to electric models, and instead lobbied hard to soften EU emission standards. Now, they struggle to cope with the competition from cheaper and often superior battery-electric models from China and the US. 

As a result, Germany’s car industry shed more than 42,000 jobs in a year, and car industry association VDA has warned of a potential employment collapse in the sector. Volkswagen recently confirmed plans to cut up to 100,000 jobs globally, BMW was reported to shed as many as 8,000 jobs in Germany, and luxury carmaker Porsche, a VW subsidiary, said it will cut around one in five jobs by 2035, ​with 9,000 positions to be axed in total.

In October last year, Germany’s transport ministry presented a draft master plan to ramp up charging infrastructure across the country, including a provision to expand fast charging points for trucks along motorways.