Recharging stations

Why are these statistics needed?

It is important to provide statistics on electric vehicle (EV) recharging stations due to the importance of electro-mobility in today’s transport sector and the continuous increase in the number of electric cars. These data can be used to:

• inform about the availability of existing recharging stations and predict future needs
• facilitate infrastructure planning and development
• evaluate progress in implementing the EU sustainable and smart mobility strategy.

The indicators on the density and distribution of recharging stations for electric vehicles will complement the current, voluntary data collection of regional statistics on the number of electric vehicles.

Why are they experimental?

New data sources are used to collect these data, which causes no additional burden to national statistical authorities. These sources enable the calculation of statistical indicators to assess the density and distribution of recharging stations by energy capacity at regional level (NUTS 3).

Additionally, their experimental status also arises from the limited geographical coverage. As the project progresses, it is expected that this coverage will expand to include EU, European Free Trade Association (EFTA), candidate countries, and potential candidates. Eurostat is also working on identifying other non-commercial data sources that could potentially replace the currently used proprietary ones.

How are they produced?

The statistical indicators on the distribution and density of recharging stations for electric vehicles are calculated using proprietary data available from the European Alternative Fuels Observatory (EAFO), which cover all publicly accessible charging networks.

These data are complemented by:

• open-sourced OpenStreetMap (OSM) data to enable routing calculations
• the NUTS (Nomenclature of territorial units for statistics) classification to enable the aggregation and calculation of the indicators at regional level for NUTS 3.

For further details, please consult our  methodological note.

Access to the statistics

Note to users: Please consult those datasets in the list below that display the label ‘Experimental’ on the right hand side.