Parliament passes fast charging law, tender for 1,000 stations starts this summer

Germany’s parliament has created the legal basis for a “targeted expansion” of a network of fast charging points for electric vehicles across the country, the federal transport ministry said today. The new infrastructure will include 1,000 additional fast-charging hubs so that “demand can be met even at peak times and at previously uneconomical locations as the number of e-vehicle registrations increases”, the ministry said. “The nearest fast charging station must be accessible in just a few minutes,” transport minister Andreas Scheuer explained. A tender for the construction of the stations – a so-called High Power Charging (HPC) infrastructure with a capacity of at least 150 kW at the respective charging points – will start in summer 2021. The government has earmarked some two billion euros for its development and operation.

Energy industry association BDEW commented that the planning approval process could create a bottleneck to the infrastructure build-up. “The government could have achieved more speed in the expansion of the fast-charging infrastructure by providing land,” BDEW head Kerstin Andreae said. On a positive note, they added that the monitoring process has been streamlined to allow for an initial evaluation as early as 2024.