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There are 52 charging points at this fast charging facility in Kamen, North Rhine-Westphalia
Photo: Bernd Thissen / dpa
Well over a million e-cars are on the road in Germany if you include so-called plug-in hybrids, i.e. vehicles that have both an internal combustion engine and an electric motor on board.
By the end of the decade, the number of electric cars in this country is expected to rise to 15 million - but that requires a massive expansion of the charging infrastructure.
The expansion has been happening too slowly so far.
2000 charging points would have to be set up every week, complained the President of the Association of the Automotive Industry, Hildegard Müller.
But only around 300 would be built.
Current figures from the Federal Network Agency also show that there is currently no publicly accessible charging station for e-cars in more than half of the municipalities in Germany.
The 25,376 publicly accessible charging facilities with 49,207 charging points
for electric cars are distributed extremely unevenly.
Paradoxical situation in Bavaria
This is what it says in a response from the Federal Ministry of Economics to a parliamentary question from left parliamentary group leader Dietmar Bartsch, which is available to the newspapers of the »Funke« media group. Of the 10,796 municipalities in Germany, 6516 do not have a single charging station for electric cars. Corresponding vehicles can only be supplied with new energy at private charging boxes at home.
According to the report, there are particularly few municipalities with charging stations in Rhineland-Palatinate with its many small towns (1962 of 2302 without charging station).
But also in Thuringia, for example (491 of 633 municipalities without a charging station), the range is manageable.
The situation in Bavaria is somewhat paradoxical.
In absolute numbers, there are most charging stations per federal state, but there are also a large number of locations without a corresponding offer (994 of 2056).
In North Rhine-Westphalia, on the other hand, only eight of a total of 396 locations have no charging facilities for e-cars.
Demand more money for the expansion of the charging stations
Bartsch spoke to the Funke newspapers about a major "charging station failure".
The switch to e-mobility could not succeed if politicians missed the provision of infrastructure.
"Instead of subsidizing the purchase of electric cars with billions, the future federal government must invest billions in a nationwide charging system," he demanded.
The chairman of IG Metall, Jörg Hofmann, made a similar statement.
"There will be a crash if we don't rework it," he warned in the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung".
Subsidy programs were running, factories were being converted and customers wanted the vehicles - at the same time there were too few charging stations.
chs / AFP
