Germany needs to improve EV charger access for tenants in low-income housing – report
Clean Energy Wire
To support the transition to clean mobility among low-income households, Germany needs to improve access to charging facilities for tenants without a private parking space, according to a report by the Öko-Institut.
The researchers modelled emissions and investments in clean mobility up to 2045 and found that transport emissions will fall most heavily on low-income households with high car mileage from the mid-2030s onwards. These households, however, face high hurdles in switching to electric vehicles (EVs) due to a limited number of affordable models. Meanwhile, they also face higher petrol and diesel costs with every passing year.
“There is a risk that rising costs of fossil-fuel-based mobility will place a disproportionate burden on precisely those households that have fewer opportunities to switch,” the report authors wrote.
The government should therefore continue its EV purchase incentives, yet narrow them specifically to low-income households from 2028, and improve charging facilities for people without their own parking space, the Climate Neutrality Foundation said. The group, which commissioned the report, supplemented the modelling with a survey of 3,000 potential EV buyers. It found that access to charging is a central factor in people’s willingness to buy an EV.
“Low-income households drive older cars, are more likely to be tenants, and therefore switch to electric vehicles later,” said Peter Kasten, head of resources and mobility at the Öko-Institut and a co-author of the report. “Measures such as social leasing or other income-based purchase incentives, which make the switch easier for low-income households with high mileage, are therefore of great importance.”
Germany introduced a scheme to support the purchase of EVs for low- and middle-income households at the start of the year. Subsidy levels vary depending on vehicle type, household income and family size. The government has allocated 3 billion euros to the programme, which it said would support around 800,000 vehicles through 2029.
A recent analysis by the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) found that electric mobility adoption is gaining steam in Germany. One in four newly registered cars was an EV in the first eight months of 2026, but DIW said that most of the new EV registrations would have happened also without the purchase premium.
The shift to electric cars, together with a move from cars to public transport and more walking and cycling, are central levers to reduce transport emissions, which have remained stubbornly high in Germany for years. The sector is responsible for around a fifth of the country’s emissions, most of it from road traffic.