Germany now has more public EV charging points than any other country in Europe. Official data from the Bundesnetzagentur (BNetzA), Germany's federal network regulator, counted 200,255 public charging points as of April 1, 2026 — a 17% increase year over year. More telling: total grid capacity across those chargers jumped 28%, from 6.7 gigawatts to 8.5 gigawatts, meaning the network is getting not just bigger but meaningfully faster.
Ultra-fast charging leads the surge
The sharpest growth came at the top of the power curve. Chargers delivering 299 kW or more — fast enough to add significant range in under 15 minutes on most modern EVs — grew 41% to 17,689 units. The 149–299 kW tier grew 30%, reaching 19,684 units. AC chargers (the slower, Level 2-equivalent stations common in parking garages) still dominate the count at 149,002 versus 51,253 DC units, but DC is clearly where investment is flowing.
On the operator side, EnBW mobility+ leads with 11,825 charging points and roughly 1.06 GW of total capacity. Tesla's German network ranks third by point count at 3,665 locations, but second by raw power output at 906 MW — reflecting the Supercharger network's higher-output hardware.
The US picture looks different
The US ended Q1 2026 with 73,394 DC fast-charging ports across 13,708 locations, per InsideEVs. Tesla controls about 52% of that total, though its share of new deployments has dropped from over 40% in 2025 to around 26% in early 2026 as networks like Ionna, ChargePoint, and Electrify America scale up.
Connector standardization is still settling. NACS (Tesla-developed connector now becoming the US standard) accounts for just 606 ports in non-Tesla networks so far, compared to 2,102 CCS1 ports added in Q1 alone. The transition is real but gradual.
Unlike Germany, which scrapped its federal EV purchase subsidy in December 2023 and has leaned on infrastructure expansion as its primary policy tool, the US still offers the $7,500 federal EV tax credit under IRA Section 30D. The policy debate here centers less on charger counts and more on whether the electrical grid can support the load — a different constraint, but one that shapes where investment goes.
What the gap means
Germany's ratio works out to roughly one public charger per 420 residents. The US, at roughly 73,000 DC ports for 335 million people, is thinner on coverage — though home charging via Level 2 (240-volt) installations, which Germany's urban density makes less practical, closes much of that gap for suburban and rural drivers. The buildout is accelerating on both sides of the Atlantic; the strategies just look different.