90 million euros for retrofitting public charging infrastructure

The Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure (BMVI) is today publishing the second call from the newly launched funding guideline „Publicly accessible charging infrastructure for electric vehicles in Germany“. From September 9, 2021, companies, cities and municipalities, public institutions and private individuals will be able to receive funding to retrofit existing publicly accessible charging infrastructure. The funding call aims to modernize the charging stations with a view to increasing charging capacity and charging convenience on the one hand and to make existing charging infrastructure publicly accessible to all on the other.

Federal Minister of Transport Andreas Scheuer: „The technical development of electric cars is progressing rapidly and with it the storage capacity of the battery. To ensure that the infrastructure keeps pace with higher charging capacity and therefore shorter charging times, we are now providing 90 million euros in funding to retrofit existing charging points. We are also supporting companies with retrofitting if they want 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 Charging Infrastructure Control Center: „Existing charging infrastructure locations are very valuable. They have been developed at great expense and are well known to users. We want to increase the efficiency of these locations or make them publicly available in the first place. A very valuable lever in the ‚overall charging infrastructure system‘!“

With the first call from the new funding guideline, the BMVI is also funding the development of public charging infrastructure in parallel. Applications can be submitted from August 31, 2021. By 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 aim is to set up at least 50,000 charging points (including at least 20,000 fast charging points).

In the first edition of the federal funding guideline for charging infrastructure for electric vehicles, 300 million euros were available from 2017 to 2020. Around 30,000 public charging points were approved. Almost 13,000 of these have already been installed, including around 2,000 fast-charging points. Parallel to the new funding guideline, the BMVI is supporting the development of the charging infrastructure with funding programs for on-site charging infrastructure and for the purchase and installation of private wallboxes, among other things. The tendering process for the German network with 1,000 fast-charging locations will also start shortly.