The first major charging station providers have announced massive price increases for January 2023. A price increase of up to 27 percent can be expected. “If politicians don’t act as quickly as possible, Germany will screw up the electric transition. The prices for electric cars and their maintenance costs continue to rise, making a switch to electromobility increasingly unattractive,” emphasizes Axel Schäfer, Managing Director of the Federal Association of Business Mobility (BBM).
Due to the energy crisis and the significant increase in energy prices, charging station providers are also forced to raise prices. Just recently, EnBW announced a price increase of up to 27 percent from mid-January 2023. According to the BBM, other providers will almost certainly follow.
Axel Schäfer has a clear opinion: “Due to the higher electricity costs in connection with the capping of the subsidy sums up to and including the elimination of the subsidy for companies, the attractiveness of electric vehicles is falling.” Ultimately, the decisive factor for the choice of electromobility is the total operating costs, according to Schäfer. “It is absurd what politicians are doing in view of the electromobility that is so often invoked as necessary.”
The mobility association calls for quick political action. An electricity price brake must also apply to the charging infrastructure, otherwise the BBM sees the mobility turnaround at risk. In addition, the regulations for the support measures are to be changed once more. Companies should not be excluded from funding. “Currently, the economic arguments ‘in favor of electromobility’ are massively disappearing. This will certainly mean that companies initially refrain from electrification. In the current situation, fewer and fewer companies can afford to accept the additional costs for sustainability arguments. Image or not,” sums up Marc-Oliver Prinzing, CEO. (awm)
