According to figures from the Federal Network Agency in Germany, the expansion of the charging network in Europe has lost steam. And now a huge charging operator is bankrupt.
The first charging operators have not just started to falter. They have directly fallen into bankruptcy. Most recently, the Austrian company EnerCharges has turned things around.
That's what Auto Motor und Sport writes.
At the same time, the pace at which the charging stations are set up decreases. In Europe's largest car market in Germany alone, the proportion of new charging stations has fallen by 27 percent in one year.
Back at EnerCharges, the management must admit that with a debt of 15.7 million euros, corresponding to 117 million Danish kroner, they can no longer pay their bills.
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At the consulting company DXBe, which, among other things, makes a living by advising charging operators, they would like to point out why charging points and their owners are currently declining.
To be a profitable business there must be 16 to 18 charging processes per fast charging station per day, says the consulting company's director Wulf Schlachter.
Based on the data available today on the number of charges in Europe, there are only about 5 to 6 charges per charging point per day, says DXBe.
For the same reason, Wulf Schlachter also expects that the number of new lightning chargers will drop by half. At least in relation to 2023.
However, chargers for electric cars not only have less speed compared to before, their setup can also squeeze the life out of smaller communities. In Mors, a church has been refused a dispensation from the EU rule that there must be charging stations in the church parking lot.
All because 20 cars can park at the church. But the voluntary associations also fear that the new EU requirement for charging points could be the death of voluntary work. Read more about it here.
The fact that the electric cars generally have less speed than before is actually so obvious that it comes to some extent behind the car brands. At Volkswagen, for example, people are surprised that motorists are now looking for hybrid cars.
And at Ford, they have completely scrapped the idea of only selling electric cars to Europeans. Instead, the brand, whose European management, after significant rounds of layoffs, is now once again handled by the United States, will convert production at entire factories to hybrid models from 2027.
