E-Mobility: GEIG Pushes for Expansion of Private Charging Stations

By 2030, at least 7 to 10 million electric vehicles are to roll on Germany’s roads and around 1 million charging points will exist. The federal government is therefore increasingly pressing forward. At the beginning of March, it passed a law to promote the further construction of private charging stations. Specifically, the law with the unwieldy name building-electric mobility infrastructure law, or GEIG for short, is intended to accelerate the expansion of the pipeline and charging infrastructure in the building sector. The Federal Ministry of Economics writes: “The main regulatory content provides that in the case of new residential buildings with more than five parking spaces every parking space and for the construction of new residential buildings with more than six parking spaces every third parking space will be equipped with protective pipes for electric cables.” (*) In other words, builders of buildings with a correspondingly high number of parking spaces must now also include the infrastructure for charging stations.

Private Charging Stations Funded with 200 Million Euros

What makes GEIG so interesting? It is already the second initiative of the federal government within a short time to improve the charging station infrastructure in Germany. In November 2020, a 200 million euro programme of financial support for the construction of private charging stations was launched. According to RP Online, “nearly a quarter of a million private charging stations for electric cars” have already been funded since then. (*)

What is curious, however, is that despite the growth, the exact number of private charging stations in Germany is still unknown. The Federal Network Agent countsonly charging stations in public spaces, of which there were just 36,492 nationwide at the beginning of February. These numbers can be read in detail in the nationwide charging station map.

2020 Brought Breakthrough in E-Mobility

If you look at the numbers of new car registrations, both federal initiatives are not a second too early. On the contrary: according to Auto Motor Sport, 2020 brought the “breakthrough of electromobility” from a German point of view. (*) While the total number of new registrations in 2020 fell by 19.1 percent compared to the previous year, the number of newly registered electric cars soared by 207 percent, while the number of plug-in hybrids increased by 342 percent.

A boom that should please not only the environment, but also investors of strategic metals. Finally, the growing production of electric vehicles continues to drive demand for technology metals, including lithium and cobalt, rare earths such as neodymium and dysprosium.

(*) Translation by TRADIUM