This was one of the government’s targets for the end of 2021: to provide the French with 100,000 public charging stations for electric cars on the territory. At the end of 2021, there was no account at all, less than half of the task was completed. The reason for this delay: a health crisis.

A year and a half later, it would seem that the government took a quick hand The goal of 100,000 public terminals has been achieved, with a significant acceleration in deployment in recent months. ” This is a real achievement“Clément Molizon, CEO of Avere, which unites all industrialists in the industry, congratulated.

“It’s time for a positive message and reassurance about deployment status”he emphasized, while failure to achieve this goal within the allotted time was widely commented on.

This is how France becomes the second most prosperous countrylagging behind the Netherlands and slightly ahead of Germany, which was still ahead a few months ago, Avere noted.

For Emmanuel Macron, by 2030, 400,000 terminals must be reached to respond to the continuous growth of electric mobility, especially since the ban on the sale of thermal models in 2035 will undoubtedly accelerate the process.

Several public high-speed terminals in France

On the other hand, regarding the quality of these public terminals, “we’ll be back” as some would say. Indeed, if we put aside the possible problems with the reliability of the terminals, France has about 10% of fast charging points, i.e. more than 50 kW of capacity.

And we obviously can’t say that electric cars today rarely accept such charging power, since most of them support double, triple, quadruple or even quintuple in the case of the most popular models.

Some private terminal operators, such as Ionity, are starting to offer terminals with a capacity of 350 kW. Sure, the network is different and it’s a private operator, but the gap is huge compared to the public network.

A network that will grow

” We have set ourselves a quantitative goal, and that is very good (…), but the quality of recharging is also important“, insists Mathieu Dischamp, CEO of the French company Powerdot, one of the main operators of fast charging stations in France.

” In Germany, we are 18% more of fast charging points, emphasizes Mathieu Dischamp, for which France should aim for 20% to meet demand.

” There are currently 1.3 million electric cars in France, and according to forecasts, there will be 13 million in 2030., he warns. He cites supermarkets as an example: When we go shopping, we should be able to recharge in 30-40 minutes“.