In September, France passed the milestone of 150,000 charging stations on its territory. However, the slow charging points were not operational enough. When is today?
We have more than 150,000 public charging points on French territory, making France the second best equipped country in Europe behind the Netherlands and a short head ahead of Germany. But the government does not count stop there since the new objective has been defined at 400,000 infrastructures by 2027. However, these charging stations still need to be maintained In September, the percentage of number of terminals available without! worries wasn’t really good. What about today?
Charging stations more reliable than a month and a year ago
Good news, the charging stations are more functional than a month ago. The availability rate of charging points was, on average, 95% at the end of October, according to the national barometer of charging infrastructures open to the public published in November 2024 by Avere-France and the Ministry of Ecological Transition. This is the percentage of charging points which are neither under maintenance nor out of service. In detail, the availability rate of slow chargers is 93.5%, that of fast chargers (50 to 150 kW) is 94.2% and that of ultra-fast chargers (more than 150 kW) reaches 96.2 %.
Last September, these rates were respectively 78% on slow chargers, 87% on fast charging stations and 85% on ultra-fast ones. How to explain such a gap? Quite simply thanks to much more rigorous maintenance and servicing of terminals, which until now was sorely lacking among operators. There is nothing worse for an electric car user to travel tens of kilometers only to finally come across a broken charging point, the fault of an aging installation. Nevertheless, it therefore appears that we are continuing in the right direction for the moment. Because in September 2023, the situation was even worse. At the time, the availability rates for fast and ultra-fast chargers were only 77% and 75%.
More than 47,000 charging stations
In total, France has 47,628 public charging stations (each hosting several charging points/terminals) across France. But also in the Overseas Departments and Regions! Concerning the charging points, there are therefore more than 150,000 as indicated above. The most numerous are slow charging stations, with 126,000 installations. Next come the ultra-fast (15,000 installations) and the rapid (9,000 installations).
They are available almost everywhere on roads, in businesses, in parking lots, but especially in shops. 44% of charging points are located near them. On the distribution side, the majority of terminals are installed in the Île-de-France region. It has 25,715 chargers.
However, the increasing availability of charging sites does not do everything to encourage the vehicle fleet to drive electric. In this segment (without taking into account the autonomy problems of electric cars for example), the difficulty of paying at a terminal by credit card also questions motorists. Even if, most of the time, manufacturers offer partnerships, after purchasing an EV, with a charging operator.
Source: www.autoplus.fr
