90 million euros for the modernisation of public charging infrastructure

The Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure (BMVI) is today already launching the second funding call from the newly established “Publicly Accessible Charging Infrastructure for Electric Vehicles in Germany” funding guideline (“Öffentlich zugängliche Ladeinfrastruktur für Elektrofahrzeuge in Deutschland”). From 9 September 2021, companies, cities and municipalities, public institutions and private individuals will be able to receive funding for the modernisation of existing publicly accessible charging infrastructure.

The call for funding is aimed firstly at modernising the charging points with a view to higher charging performance and enhanced convenience, and secondly at making existing charging infrastructure publicly accessible to all.

Federal Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer: “The technical development of electric cars is advancing rapidly and with it the storage capacity of the battery. To ensure that the infrastructure keeps pace with higher charging capacity and thus shorter charging times, we are now funding the modernisation of existing charging points with an amount totalling 90 million euros. We are also supporting companies in their upgrading efforts if they intend to open up their charging infrastructure to everyone. Our goal is: charging, always and everywhere.”

Johannes Pallasch, spokesperson for the management team of the National Centre for Charging Infrastructure: “Existing charging infrastructure sites are of very high value. They have been developed with significant effort and are well known to users. We want to increase the performance of these sites or make them accessible to the public. This is a very valuable point of leverage in the overall charging infrastructure system!”

With the first call from the new funding guideline, the BMVI is also promoting the development of public charging infrastructure in parallel. Applications will be possible from 31 August 2021. Until the end of 2025, the BMVI will provide a total of 500 million euros with the funding guideline “Publicly accessible charging infrastructure for electric vehicles in Germany”. The goal is to establish at least 50,000 charging points (of which at least 20,000 are fast charging points).

In the first instalment of the federal funding guideline Charging Infrastructure for Electric Vehicles, 300 million euros were available from 2017 to 2020. Around 30,0000 public charging points were approved. Almost 13,000 of these have already been built, including around 2,000 fast charging points. In parallel to the new funding guideline, the BMVI is supporting the development of the charging infrastructure with, among other things, the funding programmes for local charging infrastructure and for the purchase and installation of private wallboxes. In addition, the tendering procedure for the Deutschlandnetz (Germany network) with 1,000 fast-charging locations will start shortly.