The European Union is drawing up plans to have half a million charging stations around the Union by 2020. It’s an ambitious plan, and one that could make recharging stations more numerous than petrol stations. The increase in charging stations is part of an eight billion Euro “Clean Power for Transport Package”, which also includes plans on developing hydrogen, biofuel and natural gas networks.
Europe’s plug-in car adoption rate is currently low, but are expected to account for between 2-8 percent of total vehicle sales by 2025. Annual sales of plug-ins are still in low four-figure sums.
A proliferation of charging stations could help change that, though a look at the figures shows how high some of those targets are to reach the EU’s target, Germany would have to install 148,000 public points up from the current 2,000. By comparison, the U.S. currently has around 5,300 public stations.
In the meantime, Europe still has other issues to overcome, including adoption of the new combined charging system plug, and convincing people that plug-ins can save people money over the very economical clean diesel cars which make up more than 70% of cars sold in Europe.
