France has belatedly passed a national goal to establish 100,000 public charging stations for electric cars as the country seeks to accelerate the development of a sector deemed critical for fighting climate change.
AVERE, the European Association for Electromobility, recently announced that France had hit the milestone and now only lags the Netherlands in terms of public charging stations. The French government is now racing to meet a new goal of installing 400,000 charging points by 2030, according to Le Monde.
This comes as the pace of deployment continues to accelerate. Prior to 2020, France was averaging less than 5,000 new public charging stations each year. Now the country is seeing up to 4,000 every month, according to AVERE.
These numbers do not include private charging stations which number more than 1 million, according to Enedis, the electricity distribution network manager
Clearing the first hurdle showed just how complex it will be to reach the energy transition goals.
Back in October 2020, Transportation Minister Jean-Baptiste Djebbari set a goal of 100,000 charging stations by the end of 2021. But by March 2022, the country had only reached 57,732.
Getting large highway operators to move with urgency proved a challenge. In response, these companies said they were not sure there was enough competition in the sector in terms of companies that build and maintain charging stations.
At the same time, local governments were slow to allocate space for the placement of these stations.
Still, the push to get this infrastructure in place has encouraged venture capital investors to pour money into French startups that deploy networks of charging stations.
For instance, mobility startup Yespark raised €28 million to build 30,000 charging stations by 2025. French startup Bump recently announced a $180 million funding detail in partnership with DIF Capital Partners to roll out a network of charging stations in partnership with different commercial spaces.
ZePlug, which places charging stations in multi-occupant and office buildings, announced that it has raised €5 million. And NW Groupe, which provides a range of services related to renewable energy that includes charging stations, raised €300 million in July 2022.
“We know how to orchestrate the deployment,” Yesspark co-founder Thibault Chary told La Tribune. “That is to say that we have both hands on parking spaces, but also service provider electricians, just as we work with the Enedis network manager and electricity suppliers.”
Across Europe, the market for building charging stations is red hot. According to one market research firm, the value of this market in Europe will reach $61.73 billion by 2029. In addition to France and the Netherlands, the other top 5 European markets include Germany, Norway, and the UK.
The charging infrastructure is also essential for countries to meet a new European Union rule that will prohibit sales of gasoline-powered cars starting in 2035.
For the moment, the bulk of these charging stations falls in the low-charging category. According to AVERE, 86% of France’s stations are 22 kW or less. Consumers tend to prefer this level of service because charging costs are much lower, according to AVERE.
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