Why Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Is Years Behind the Cars
June 25, 2026 · Frisian News
Germany sold 784,000 electric vehicles in 2024 but installed only 68,000 new charging points. Governments mandated EV adoption without planning proportional infrastructure investment.
Germany sold hundreds of thousands of electric vehicles in 2024, but the country installed far fewer new public charging points that year, a gap that grows wider every month. Norway, held up as an EV success story, saw complaints about queue times at fast chargers rise sharply in 2025.
Governments across Europe mandated EV adoption without planning proportional charging investment. Manufacturers had financial incentives to build cars. Charging networks did not. The result is predictable: drivers pay premium prices for scarce capacity, private operators rake in profits from bottlenecks, and public trust in the EV transition erodes.
The technology exists. Installing a public charger takes weeks, not years. The bottleneck is political will and budget allocation, not engineering. Most European governments spent only a small fraction of transport budgets on EV charging while directing the rest toward road expansion, public transit, or nothing at all. They had choices and made them.
Apartment dwellers in cities cannot install home chargers. Rural drivers face hours between working stations. Long-distance travel requires planning that gasoline drivers never needed. Meanwhile, some who made early EV purchases are selling them used because the charging experience made ownership untenable. These are not marginal users complaining about convenience. They are early adopters betrayed by policy timing.
The infrastructure was always the hard part. Cars are a solved problem. Charging stations test whether governments actually commit to infrastructure or just issue mandates and declare victory. So far, the answer is clear.
Published June 25, 2026 · Frisian News