
How ultra-fast charging evolved in Belgium?
After several papers on fast charging evolution in France and in Europe, we wondered whether the trends identified would be similar in other countries in Europe. Our team dived again into our database to look at ultra fast charging in Belgium.
At Gireve, we are at the heart of the EV charging industry, empowering CPOs and eMSPs with our seamless roaming platform. Combining marketplace technologies, transaction processing, and data management, our mission is to support stakeholders and accelerate their transition to electric mobility on a global scale. But we don’t stop there: we process and enrich data on charging stations and driver behaviors. We offer insightful analysis and strategic consulting. We believe that this wealth of information will shape the future of mobility, making it sustainable, innovative, and accessible to all.
So, we’re sharing a series of insights learned from our data, to foster discussions and learn together.
We are happy to present our monthly publication related to our Data and Consulting department: Beyond EV Charging
Executive Summary
Belgium is making significant strides in the expansion of its electric vehicle (EV) ecosystem, driven by a strong shift towards electric mobility. In tandem with rising EV sales, Belgium has substantially expanded its public EV charging infrastructure. By Q3 2024, the country had 77,443 publicly accessible charging points, a 72% year-on-year increase. Fast charging, delivering 100 kW or more, is particularly on the rise, with an impressive 119% growth in just 12 months. The market has also evolved, with the number of CPOs in Belgium doubling between 2023 and 2024. Although five major players, including Allego, IONITY, and Tesla, dominate the market, local companies such as Sparki are gaining traction. Electra, a newcomer to Belgium, has seen the most rapid growth, becoming a leading player within a year. Despite the rapid increase in infrastructure, DC fast charging usage remains relatively low, with usage rates between 7-8%. Nonetheless, both AC and DC charging usage rates are gradually rising.
Introduction
As road transport accounts for a fifth of the EU’s C02 emissions, ambitious targets are set on the industry to achieve the 2050 climate neutrality goal. The EU is set to ban the sale of petrol/diesel cars from 2035. With European carmakers making a big push towards electric models, studies forecast an average annual growth of 11.5% for the passenger EV sub-segment from 2022 to 2033 in Belgium. As of today, there is a total of 220,000 BEV on the roads, representing 3,2% of total fleet. The share of BEV newly registered cars keeps increasing, from 10% in 2022 to 20% in 2023 and reaching 25% in 2024.
With EV sales booming in the country, Belgium is expanding its public EV charging infrastructure. Consequently, as of Q3 2024, there is a total of 77,443 publicly accessible charging points. It represents a 72% increase compared to the previous year.
In this growing industry, fast charging becomes an increasingly important topic to meet the charging needs of EV drivers in their long journeys. We’ve taken a look at fast chargers delivering power higher than 100 kW.
As in France (paper 4, 7, 9), the fast charging landscape is undergoing significant evolution. Therefore, we’ve chosen key metrics from our database, illustrating the growth of this sector, market dynamics, and the resultant impact on quality.
Evolution of ultra-fast charging
Belgium has been expanding its public infrastructure rapidly over the past few years. The installations have accelerated since the beginning of 2022. This is particularly visible when looking at fast charging as seen on the map above. This map illustrates the growing deployment of fast charging stations in the country (Gireve data). As of today, 2.18 TW of EV Charging power are publicly available in Belgium.
The graph below shows that fast charging delivering power of 100 kW or more has emerged in the last 12 months. As of 2024, there are 3,162 fast chargers in the country, an impressive 118,97% growth in a short 12-month period.
When looking at the numbers, we can see a 5-fold increase over the past 2 years. This is lower than the 6-fold increase noted in France (see paper 4). As seen on the graph, fast charging accounts for 30% of the total power available in publicly available charging in Belgium as of 2024, its share increasing every year but with a notable growth in 2023.
Evolution of the stakeholders
The market has evolved rapidly towards fragmentation, as observed in France. About 60 CPOs are now offering fast charging in Belgium. This is an impressive growth compared to 30 CPOs one year ago. However, we can see from the market share graph above that 5 CPOs still account for half of the number of charging points in Belgium in 2024.
European leaders are present, such as Allego, IONITY, Tesla, Shell and TotalEnergies. Nonetheless, we can see some local players involved in this segment such as Sparki, Powerland, Optiload and the charging manufacturer Smappee.
Some remarkable YoY growth can be highlighted such as Allego. This is a consequence of long-term B2B partnerships in 2022, securing the largest number of sites on highways and fuel stations, to install ultra-fast charging points. Sparki is also following a 3-digit growth, installing its first ultra-fast charging point in 2023 and following a strategy of exclusive local partnerships since then. Installing only ultra-fast charging delivering 300kW+, Sparki also stands out by being the second most important player in terms of energy available (95 MW) despite ranking 5th in terms of number of charging points installed.
However, the most impressive growth remains from Electra, having risen to the top in terms of the number of charging points installed and the power available. The company was created in 2021 and launched its activity in Belgium in June 2023 after a first development in France.
While the expansion of fast charging is impressive, with stations offering power outputs higher than 300 kW, it’s important to note that the actual charging speed is ultimately limited by the EV’s capacity to handle that power.
The graph below shows the evolution of use rates in Belgium, with a comparison between AC and DC charging. Obviously, the ratio evolves a lot as the number of charging points is also increasing from a month to the other. Even though more chargers are installed, the average use rate is still growing for both AC and DC charging. We notice a 1% increase between 2023 and 2024 in average.
Interestingly, it can be noted that DC Charging has still a relatively low use rate between 7 to 8%. This accounts for less than 2 sessions per day in average. It could be due to the fact that DC charging is more expensive and relied on mostly for longer travels. AC charging can be used on the go in retail parking, when shopping or going to the restaurant. Moreover, as an AC charging session takes longer, the time-based use rate is logically higher than DC charging.
Conclusion
To conclude, Belgian ultra-fast charging has experienced rapid growth in the past two to three years. This growth comes together with an increase of EV drivers on the road in the country. As the market expands, it gets more fragmented. We can see though, that a small number of players still account for half of the charging points installed. Finally, the use rate of DC charging is also increasing, but remains quite low compared to AC charging. In the end, service quality is what drives end users towards one network rather than the other. Chargemap’s ranking of the best networks in Belgium, AC and DC combined, illustrates this. The ranking looks at user-friendliness of the interface, simplicity of starting the charge. It also includes the ratio of the power expected and actually delivered, as well as the condition of the charging station and cables. Among fast charging players, Fastned, Electra, Allego, TotalEnergies and IONITY are ranked in the top 10. Like in France, it would be interesting to see whether those trends carry on, how market shares evolve and how the reliability of DC charging will impact the use rate.