Current status & prospects
Electromobility is on the rise - but as the number of electric cars increases, so does the need for a comprehensive and reliable charging infrastructure. This raises some key questions for companies, cities and planners:
How well is Germany currently supplied with charging stations - which regions are already undersupplied today and where will demand increase significantly in the future?
Strong momentum in expansion
Current figures on the charging infrastructure/update of the charging station register
A look at the latest figures shows: Germany has made strong gains in expansion. The Nexiga database (*charging station register) currently includes:
- 66,569 charging locations (location with one or more charging stations)
- 215,791 charging points
This database contains all publicly and semi-publicly accessible charging stations in Germany and is an indispensable tool for anyone who wants to plan, analyze or evaluate charging infrastructure.
User numbers continue to rise
Outlook for the future: How many charging points does Germany need?
Studies predict that between 440,000 and 843,000 public charging points will be needed by 2030, depending on the scenario. The demand depends heavily on how many people can charge at home or at work.
The German government intends to close this gap with the German network (according to Toll Collect GmbH). The first expansion phase alone is planned:
- 900 new fast-charging locations
- 8,000 additional fast-charging points
The following notes on the data situation:
- There are no clear criteria for the supply of charging infrastructure, nor is there a uniform database for the inventory. Therefore, there are different results and conclusions on the degree of coverage.
- Fine-area analyses are better than averages for all of Germany. Taking the spatial structure (urban, rural) into account when analyzing supply is a step in the right direction.
- In our view, the charging pole cadastre and fine-grained data on registrations are helpful in analyzing the level of coverage.
The *Nexiga charging station cadastre
The providers of a directory or an app to search for charging columns usually only consider a part of the existing locations, be it locations of the BDEW or the Federal Network Agency. Each source always contains only a part of relevant data, which prompted Nexiga as early as June 2019 to build its own database with the "*Nexiga charging station cadastre" (which can be linked with numerous other market and geodata ). Here, public and partially public charging stations are combined and updated on a monthly basis.
Data-based planning with Nexiga
For energy suppliers, grid operators, local authorities or retail companies, Nexiga offers a sound planning basis with the charging station register:
- Complete database of all charging points
- Georeferenced information on location, charging capacity & operator
- Ideal for site analyses, potential assessments & grid expansion planning
The crucial question must always be asked: How many pillars does the country have and need?
This question is not so easy to answer, because supply varies greatly fromregion to region and depends on numerous factors. Therefore, an intelligent expansion of the public charging infrastructure is necessary, taking into account regional aspects such as mobility behavior, commuter flows and private charging options.
For these analyses and forecasts of the need for charging infrastructure, fine-grained data is used, e.g. on demographics, mobility behavior, car ownership of e-cars, number of charging stations, and data on parking spaces and garages.
Nexiga has been building up its own database since June 2019. At the end of December 2021, there were still 33,857 charging station locations with a total of 90,959 charging points in the database.
Today there are 66,569 charging locations (locations with one or more charging points) and 215,791 charging points.
The charging stations of the six largest sources/databases are compared spatially and in terms of content on a monthly basis in a complex process. Both public and partially public charging stations, e.g. in supermarket parking lots, are taken into account. Up to 10 additional pieces of information are available for each location.
In addition to address and geo-coordinate, additional features such as type (normal/fast), power, plug types, operator or the location type (highway, supermarket, hotel) are available.
In addition to the charging station register, there is also a garage register (charging at home) and a solar register (electricity for e-cars), which contain numerous other data that can be used for data-based analyses and forecasts.
