The European Union needs to install almost eight times more electric vehicle charging points per year than it did in 2023 to meet forecast demand, European autos group ACEA said on Monday. There were just over 150,000 public charging points installed last year across the bloc, said ACEA, for a total of more than 630,000. That is far short of the roughly 410,000 needed annually just for the European Commission to reach its target of 3.5 million by 2030, it said in a statement.
Italy's ACEA said it would invest 7.6 billion euros ($8.3 billion) to 2028 to grow its activities in regulated sectors including water, power grids and waste management as it pivots to becoming an infrastructure operator. "The strong discipline on costs and investments is a key aspect of our strategy to support cash generation combined with optimisation of our financial structure and capital allocation," Chief Executive Fabrizio Palermo said in a statement. In the next few years some 91% of total capital expenditures will be devoted to regulated businesses, increasing the contribution of this activities to EBITDA, while the input from its electricity retail business would shrink as the group moves away from its traditional utility business model.
Europe's electric vehicle (EV) sector risks falling behind without a robust EU industrial strategy, autos group ACEA said on Thursday citing new report findings, amid China's dominance of the supply chain and U.S. incentives for its automakers. A new report by France's Ecole Polytechnique university shows an "immense scale of challenges" for the European Union in developing an EV supply chain, the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association (ACEA) said, highlighting risks to the competitiveness of Europe's EV production as other global regions aim high with their industrial strategies.