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France has nearly 50,000 charging points, but what about public charging stations? At a time when the administration knows the exact number of private swimming pools (thank you Google!), However, it is impossible to know how many charging stations in our territory.
The TotalEnergies station in La Défense with several stations and charging points.
Six. This is the number of nuclear attack submarines held by France. One hundred and ninety-two, the number of Rafale fighter planes owned by the Air Force and the French Navy. Fifty-six, the number of nuclear power plants present in France. What do these three data have in common? None, except that they were obtained freely thanks to the essential Google search engine.
On the other hand, there is a data that is difficult to consult, that of the number of public electric charging stations in France. While rummaging on the web, our friend Google announces 29,600 units. Information provided by the Zeplug site and dating from May 2020.
In this article, it is also reported “29,578 charging points open to the public in March 2020”. Figure communicated by Avere, the National Association for the Development of Electric Mobility, which itself relies on data transmitted by Gireve, the interoperability platform bringing together operators and installers of charging stations. recharging and other electrical networks.
A single charging point on this terminal.
And this is where the shoe pinches and a certain confusion – cleverly maintained? – reigns today. It starts at the highest summit of the state, whose goal is to reach the “100,000 public charging stations” by the end of 2021. However, by consulting said “target =” blank “]document[/link] dated October 12, 2020 and published by the Ministry of Ecological Transition, we see that it is also mentioned twice of “100,000 charging points open to the public”.
@Ministry of Ecology Transition
From there to amalgamating between charging stations and charging points, there is only one step, only the drafting of Digital has repeatedly crossed through different articles. Mea-culpa. We can always be reassured by telling ourselves that we were not the only ones to make this mistake.
Charging stations offering one or more charging points
We would like to thank the Automobile Propre site, the specialist in electric mobility, which in an article from February 2021 explains the difference between charging station, charging point, charging stations and charging stations network. In short, a charging point corresponds to a single outlet on which a single electric or plug-in hybrid vehicle can come and recharge. A charging station is therefore a piece of equipment incorporating a certain number of sockets or charging points, or even connectors.
A charging station at Fontainebleau station with a single charging point.
But, because there is a but. A terminal can have four charging points, provided that only two charging points will be counted in total. Indeed, Automobile Propre gives the example of a terminal equipped with “a Type 2 socket and a Type E / F for slow charging” on one side, and “a Type 3 socket and a Type E / F” on the other side. Use either Type 2 or Type 3 plug “will condemn the domestic type socket on the same side. And vice versa”. Result, “the Type 2 socket + E / F connector assembly will constitute a single charging point”. Headache guaranteed.
Today, the authorities in charge of electric charging only mention charging points, except Tesla and Fastned, the newcomer, who talk about charging stations. Thus, each month, Avere publishes a National barometer of charging infrastructures open to the public in collaboration with Gireve.
The last barometer stopped at the end of November 2021 referenced 51,243 charging points, i.e. “an increase of + 57% since the start of the year, according to Avere.
This document also provides information on the number of charging stations per region, the total installed power per region, the distribution of charging points by installation site, charging according to the power category. Regarding this last point, we learn that there are 262 charging points (1%) offering a charging power of 150 to 350 kW, and 339 charging points (1%) at 350 kW.
As you can see, nothing, however, regarding the number of terminals. When we asked Avere about this, they turned to Gireve “who did not wish to communicate this data”.
We then contacted the Metropolis operator (5,000 charging points with billing per kilowatt hour) who also could not provide us with information, preferring to also speak of charging points.
Ditto with the Ministry of Ecological Transition on its objective of 100,000 terminals. The latter replied that in reality “we were indeed talking about 100,000 charging points”, adding that “for users, only recharging points matter”. Personally, when I have to travel by electric vehicle, I worry mainly about finding a charging station … that works, before eventually knowing the number of charging points offered!
Finally, we will get an initial explanation from Chargemap, one of the pioneers in the aggregation of charging stations in Europe, which also offers a payment card.
Its creator and CEO, Yoann Nussbaumer, told us that this “question is always complicated”. He explained to us that “everyone counts the charging points on the terminals open to roaming, but that excluded certain free terminals open to all”. Hence the difficulty in identifying all the terminals.
We stay very far from the account
Since the issue of public charging stations seems to be a state secret, we have taken the liberty of assessing their number. Knowing that it takes, on average, 1.2 charging points per terminal (to put it simply, we have rounded up to 2 charging points), it is therefore sufficient to carry out a small division with, as a dividend, the 51,243 load points and as a divisor, the number of load points. This gives 25,621 public charging stations, to which we must add these “free terminals open to all” mentioned by Chargemap.
Despite everything, we are very far from the 100,000 terminals hoped for by the French government. To achieve this objective, which is ultimately not one, we would therefore need 200,000 charging points.
Still, we are still waiting to know the exact number of public charging stations in France …