Germany commits $7b to EV charging network expansion; VW and Mercedes urge accelerated deployment.

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Germany commits $7b to EV charging network expansion; VW and Mercedes urge accelerated deployment.

February 19, 2023February 19, 2023

According to a report in the German newspaper Bild am Sonntag on Sunday, Mercedes-Benz and VW have pushed the government to do more to increase the number of electric vehicle charging points around the nation.

Ola Kallenius, chief executive of Mercedes-Benz, was reported in the newspaper as stating, “We need to make sure that the infrastructure for charging stations is being built up to speed up the move (to electric vehicles).”That’s also a political question.”

Oliver Blume, the CEO of Volkswagen, acknowledged the need for greater speed and stated that building charging stations was “a collective job of the economy, federal government, and communes.”

As part of its drive toward net zero emissions, the German government last October authorized a plan to spend 6.3 billion euros ($6.74 billion) to quickly increase the number of charging stations throughout the nation. The strategy called for hastening official authorization for the construction of charging stations.

Industry organizations stressed the need of putting the recommendations into action after long-running complaints that the government has not kept up with the explosive growth of electric vehicles.

According to Kallenius, electric vehicles are the way of the future for automobiles. Wherever the market conditions permit it, we want to be prepared to switch totally to electric automobiles in our market category by the end of this decade, he said.

That won’t happen automatically; a massive industrial conversion will be needed.

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