EMPI

Introducing the Electric Mobility Parity Index

The whole idea struck me when I received my Plugsurfing charging key. It came with a welcome card, which said they already have 400,000 charging points in Europe. I was like what? We don’t even have that many petrol stations in Europe.

Then I realized two things:

  • There’s a very important distinction between charging point and charging station. A charging point is essentially a stall at a station. A station usually has several. In other words, there are much fewer stations than points.
  • Sadly, most stations don’t offer ultra-fast charging. The majority of stations only offer up to 75 kW charging, or even less.

So I did some googling and it seems that for now, the vast majority of ultra-fast chargers (100 kW and up) in Europe belong either to the Tesla Supercharger or to the Ionity network.

But why is ultra-fast charging such a big deal? Because I believe urban and suburban driving are already conquered – the last frontier is the highway. That’s where you’re driving for hundreds of kilometers and because of this, you MUST take a charging break. Due to it being what it is, just a break, charging time is crucial. You go to the rest room and maybe have a quick meal, and off you go – you don’t have hours to wait. So in terms of highway driving, ultra-fast charging is pretty much your only option.

So ultra-fast chargers is what I’m going to take into account when comparing the availability of charging stations to petrol stations.

Methodology

It’s really simple:

EMPI = EV stations / petrol stations * 100

That means that at 100 there will be as many fast charging stations as petrol stations, at which point we can say we’ve reached parity.

The current infographic only shows the current number, but not trends – I’ll see where it goes and I might add it, or even create a separate chart about that.

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