Public charging in Europe is entering a new phase, one in which technology, user experience and business model are converging more quickly than most forecasts anticipated even a year ago. That was the shared assessment of senior representatives of Hubject, the German Association of Energy and Water Industries (BDEW) and EnBW Charging at a press briefing held during the Intercharge Network Conference 2026 (icnc26) in Berlin. There, the discussion moved beyond the usual focus on registration figures and centred instead on the infrastructure and political narrative that will determine whether electromobility can truly scale to meet demand.
Industry reaching a new stage of maturity
Christian Hahn, CEO of Hubject, set the tone by pointing to the industrial weight the sector has now achieved. "After 15 years of development, the industry is here, and it needs to stay here," he said, citing 1.7 million electric vehicles produced in European plants in 2025 and more than 2.6 million registrations across the European market. The next phase, Hahn argued, is the shift into a genuine mass market, which will require both higher consumer acceptance and greater maturity in the wider ecosystem. "What we need is scaling. Only then can we ensure that supply and products continue to match user demand."
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Germany currently has around 214,000 public charging points in operation, with a further 1,000 fast chargers expected to come online in the first half of 2026. For Kerstin Andreae, chair of the BDEW board, fast charging has been the real turning point for the sector. "Fast charging was the game-changer for electromobility," she said, recalling earlier years dominated by low-power municipal charging posts. "As an EV driver travelling across Europe on holiday myself, I can say it is simply no longer an issue." The user perspective appears to support this. A BDEW survey found that 94 percent of EV owners would purchase another electric vehicle, and 91 percent said their expectations of public charging were being met.
Politics lags behind reality
For Andreae, this makes the current political framing all the more frustrating. "We hear a lot of 'but', and we need to move away from that," she said. "What we need is a positive baseline attitude towards electromobility." Too often, she argued, the debate is dominated by isolated shortcomings rather than by the evidence of what actually works. "If we only ever talk about what does not work somewhere, then we talk far too little about what does. These 94 percent are significant proof that electromobility, once experienced, delivers on its promise."
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Andreae was particularly critical of the disconnect between user reality and political communication. "This positive perception and attitude towards electromobility has not yet reached parts of the political sphere," she said, pointing to the continuing debate over the EU's 2035 combustion-engine phase-out and recent attempts to reopen CO2 targets. Germany, she argued, should be actively shaping the market of the future rather than hesitating at its threshold. Andreae also contrasted the German approach with that of Norway, which has achieved a significantly higher share of electric vehicles despite a colder climate. "It would be pretty smart if we actively shaped this market rather than sleeping through it."
Municipal posts to fast-charging hubs
Martin Roemheld, CEO of EnBW Charging, offered a more technical perspective on why the perception of charging as slow and inconvenient is increasingly outdated. New battery-cell technologies allow charging from 10 to 80 percent in under ten minutes at peak power levels of 500 to 600 kW. "A situation in which charging actually becomes faster and easier than refuelling is no longer a vision of the future. It is technical reality, and the vehicles are now coming to market."
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Roemheld also pointed to a structural shift in how charging is being used, with centralised fast-charging hubs increasingly replacing the traditional low-power municipal model. "Customers think in terms of range, convenience and use cases." In densely built urban environments, fast-charging stations occupying the footprint of a conventional filling station are far more efficient than large arrays of slower AC chargers.
Grid connections becoming a bottleneck
The main constraint on further expansion, the speakers generally agreed, is no longer technology but grid capacity. Charging infrastructure now competes for connection capacity with data centres, battery storage projects, large-scale heat pumps and the emerging network of electric truck charging hubs. Against this backdrop, Andreae called for faster grid connection procedures, greater land availability and streamlined permitting, alongside a reduction of the electricity tax to the European minimum agreed in the coalition treaty. Roemheld added that the industry is now investing without subsidies. "We are operating on market terms and no longer need funding," he said. "Public support should concentrate on the vehicle side of the market."
Hahn closed the conference with a call for political consistency to match industry momentum. "Europe has been a lead market and a lead provider in electromobility from the beginning," he said. "Whether that will still be the case in ten years depends on the clarity we create now." (hcn)
