Users criticize public charging stations as expensive and non-transparent. A central solution for this could be more competition, as experts emphasized at a discussion round of the ADAC on Thursday. The way there will be difficult, because regional providers often dominate, and most charging stations cannot yet be operated economically.
The chairman of the Monopolies Commission, Jürgen Kühling, focuses in particular on competition among charging station operators. If this does not exist, the prices will remain high, he is sure. And currently in 84 percent of the municipalities there is a structure in which one provider dominates the market. Often these are municipal providers who got involved early on. In order to ensure more competition, Kühling pleads for higher subsidy rates for small and new providers. In addition, he pleads for prices – similar to today at petrol stations – to be signaled early and transparently.
Charging stations are often not economical
The Federal Association of the Energy and Water Industries is also in favour of competition in the market, as Andrees Gentzsch, from the BDEW Executive Board, emphasizes. However, he points out that there are already 500 charging station providers in Germany – this is much more than, for example, in the petrol station sector. In addition, the vast majority of charging stations are currently not economically viable. Actually, it takes three hours of charging time a day. At the moment, you can get one with luck.
Gentzsch warns in particular against wanting to pre-structure the construction of the charging network too much in terms of planning. However, information such as ranges and the proportion of public charging processes were still missing. Johannes Pallasch, head of the National Charging Infrastructure Control Centre, on the other hand, pleaded for planning to proceed. When the electric cars come, the infrastructure must already be there. It is the key to the ramp-up of electromobility. In addition, it must be ensured that a coherent network is created. (dpa/mer)
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From the data center:
Top 10 German cities by number of charging stations in February 2021
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