While OEMs are seemingly hell-bent on creating an electric transportation future, there is one Everest-sized speedbump between now and then: the lack of a robust charging infrastructure for those vehicles.

Although companies like Shell and bp talk about peak oil and changing their business models to less carbon-intensive approaches, how many of their stations provide electric chargers? Probably far fewer than offer gasoline, beef jerky and lottery tickets.

The European Automobile Manufacturers Association, the European Consumer Organisation and Transport & Environment have jointly written a letter to the commissioners responsible for the European Union’s Green Deal detailing the necessity for specific regulations rather than a nice-to-achieve directive, regulations that will “set binding national targets for all vehicle segments” vis-à-vis charging.

The authors write: “the following minimal targets should be set in stone: one million charging points in 2024 and three million in 2029 for passenger cars and vans, as well as around 1,000 hydrogen stations by 2029.”

And the boldface font is in their letter.

Apparently there are some 225,000 charging points in the EU right now. If they’re going to have one million charge points by January 1, 2024, then this means they need to install 258,000 additional chargers per year. Or 33,000 more per year than currently exist.–gsv