1,000 new EV charging stations coming along German Autobahn by 2020

Good news for current and soon-to-be German electric car drivers. German electric utility EnBW announced that they will deploy 1,000 new EV charging stations along the German Autobahn.

EnBW already has a small network of charging station in Germany, but those new chargers alone would more than double the size of the network.

Germany has the ambitious goal to have 1 million electric vehicles on its road by 2020 and while it is seen as unlikely with just over 50,000 vehicles registered to date, EnBW says that it doesn’t want to be an obstacle to achieving that goal.

CEO Frank Mastiaux said told Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung this week:

“We as an infrastructure partner do not want to be the bottleneck”.

It’s why they announced their plans to install 1,000 charging stations on the Autobahn and at other locations across several states by 2020, which should increase the total public EV charging infrastructure in Germany by about 25%. Not bad for a single company.

Though they didn’t confirm ratio of the type of station, level 2 or DC fast-charging. The latter would make more sense along highways and they already have a few 50 kW CHAdeMO/CCS combo connectors, and they confirmed that their future fast-charging stations will enable up to 150 kW charge rate.

While the expansion of charging infrastructure helps, it’s likely not enough to help reach the government’s goal.

Last year, they launched an incentive program to give a direct discount of €4,000 for all-electric cars and €3,000 for plug-in hybrids. The goal is to boost the number of cars with 300,000 discounts by 2019 and until EVs are more prominent on the market.

6 months into the program and fewer than 10,000 discounts were claimed, but German automakers are about to launch several new electric vehicles in the next 2 years, which is likely to change the EV landscape in the country.