Italy’s Enel enters fast-growing German e-car charging market

Italian energy company Enel has announced it will enter the growing market for e-car charging stations in Germany, Kathrin Witsch reports for business newspaper Handelsblatt. “The potential for us is enormous,” said Enel manager Dirk Idstein, apparently mirroring the mood of many companies that now start to ramp up their activity on e-car charging infrastructure after years of relative stagnation, Witsch writes. The number of charging stations in the country has grown by about one third over the past nine months and, according to energy industry group BDEW, there are now about 17,400 public or semi-public charging points across the country. However, BDEW says that in order to cater for only one million e-cars there would have to be around 70,000 charging points in Germany and an additional 7,000 fast charging points, of there currently are only 2,000.

Germany will likely miss its initial goal of having one million e-cars on the road by 2020. As of early 2019, there were about 83,175 purely electric and 341,400 hybrid cars registered in the country. Several major carmakers like Volkswagen or Daimler have announced plans to drastically increase the number of e-cars they sell, letting the projected demand for charging points rise accordingly. A trial by energy company E.ON recently showed that investments in grid infrastructure needed to accommodate the growing number of e-cars likely will be much lower than anticipated.