Norway leads global EV adoption, with electric cars accounting for nearly 90 percent of new car sales in 2025. Even there, owners report queuing for hours at fast chargers. In Germany, the ratio of public chargers to electric cars has worsened. Simple math: cars are multiplying faster than chargers, and that gap accelerates every quarter.

Automakers like Tesla, Volkswagen, and BMW pushed hard on EV sales during the subsidy boom. They took government money and converted it to profit on the car side. Charging infrastructure requires different investment, different expertise, and offers lower margins. So they did not build it. In most European countries, municipalities and a few specialized firms own the charging networks. The car makers sell cars. Someone else worries about charging. This split of incentives was built into policy from the start.

The International Energy Agency has reported that EV deployment has outpaced charging infrastructure growth. A family in rural Germany can drive home in an EV but has no local charger. Public networks concentrate in cities and along major highways. Apartment dwellers without private garages are hit hardest. They own the cars but cannot charge them efficiently at home. This looks like policy failure, but it is also by design. Subsidizing car sales without requiring charging infrastructure moved the problem from automakers to consumers and municipalities.

Germany's KfW bank distributed billions in EV purchase subsidies. It spent a fraction of that on charging infrastructure. France followed the same path. The Netherlands did not. The difference is policy. One government let carmakers and buyers solve it themselves. The other imposed requirements. Only one works.

Millions of people now own cars they cannot conveniently charge. This was not an accident. It was the result of subsidies untethered to infrastructure requirements. The automakers got paid. The charging networks stayed thin. The owners waited in line. The system worked exactly as designed, just not for the people who bought the cars.