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Depending on the week—or the headline—EV charging infrastructure is either fundamentally broken or already “good enough” for mass adoption. We hear about five-minute fast charging just around the corner, while at the same time stories circulate about long lines, broken chargers, and frustrated drivers.
That’s why I was genuinely excited to spend time with the Roland Berger EV Charging Index 2025. The Index is an annual, data-driven benchmark that evaluates EV adoption and charging infrastructure across 33 countries, combining real user experience with hard infrastructure data.
It’s published by Roland Berger, one of the world’s leading strategy consulting firms with deep expertise in automotive, energy, and mobility transformation. The Index surveys over 12,000 battery-electric vehicle (BEV) drivers globally and combines their feedback with infrastructure deployment data to create a comprehensive picture of how EV charging actually works in practice.
If you’re an EV enthusiast, an industry professional, or simply someone trying to understand what’s actually happening with electric vehicle adoption and charging, you’re not alone in feeling overwhelmed. Even for someone like me—working in batteries and electrification for years and driving electric every day—it can be difficult to separate perception, anecdote, and reality.
The EV Charging Index offers a rare opportunity to step back from headlines and social media debates and look at EV charging through a consistent, global, data-driven lens.
This article is my attempt to do exactly that:
“Is the EV charging infrastructure good enough?”
This is, without exaggeration, one of the most common questions I get—at conferences, in consulting projects, from friends and family, and from people who are curious about EVs but unsure whether to make the switch. And the honest answer is: there is no simple yes or no.
What people are really asking is something much more personal: Will it work for me?
Two people can drive the exact same electric car and have completely different charging and EV ownership experiences—simply because their daily lives look different. Where they live. How far they drive. How flexible they are. When someone asks whether charging infrastructure is “good enough,” the only honest response is: good enough for whom, and where?
Before going any further, it helps to zoom out and look at how EV charging and electrification have actually evolved globally.
The EV Charging Index shown in Figure 1 is a composite indicator developed by Roland Berger that combines three things:
In simple terms, a higher score means EV charging works better in real life—not just on paper.
Figure 1 shows that overall charging readiness and electrification have improved in most regions over the past two years. China, Norway, and the U.S. rank among the leading countries in overall progress, while many others show steady—but uneven—improvement. At the same time, some markets stagnate or fall behind relative to peers.
This already explains why charging experiences feel so different depending on where you are. There is no single global charging reality—and the Index makes that visible.
Globally, almost 9 out of 10 BEV drivers report being satisfied with their charging experience. But satisfaction ranges from around 64% in Japan to over 94% in China and parts of the Gulf region. The same technology delivers very different outcomes depending on context.
I experience the tension between satisfaction and frustration with EV charging very directly.
I grew up in Austria without ever owning a car. I moved to the U.S. five years ago and have been driving electric ever since. Today, my daily life is centered in suburban Wisconsin, but I regularly visit my family in Graz and travel across Europe for work. Mentally, I constantly compare these worlds—and ask myself how my EV experience would look if my daily life were based there instead.
In Wisconsin, charging is almost invisible. I have a driveway, a garage, and a 240-volt outlet. I installed a home charger for around $400 and charge mostly from my own solar. Charging happens while I sleep or work.
In Graz, Austria, the same setup would be impossible. I live in an apartment and park on the street when I’m lucky enough to find a spot. There is no access to home charging at all. Public charging would define the entire experience—not as a backup, but as the primary energy source.
Same driver. Same technology. Completely different starting point.
My EV journey has evolved alongside my life. We started with larger EVs—a Mustang Mach-E and a Ford F-150 Lightning—chosen for frequent travel and longer distances. (I wrote extensively about our year with the F-150 Lightning here if you want the full story of what daily life with an electric truck actually looks like.) Today, our needs are different. We stay mostly around town, travel long distances less often, and have deliberately downsized to two small EVs, one without fast-charging capability. It fits our lifestyle—including a stroller 😊—and nothing more.
According to the Roland Berger EV Charging Index, 74% of battery-electric vehicle drivers globally use their EV at least four days per week, and around 80% drive more than 10,000 kilometers per year. EVs are no longer niche experiments—they are becoming everyday mobility tools.
If we look at reasons why EVs are being bought or leased (Figure 2), across regions, lower operating costs and environmental considerations are the top motivations. More than half of BEV drivers say their EV is cheaper per kilometer than a comparable combustion vehicle. What stood out to me personally is how motivations differ by region. In China, vehicle intelligence and digital integration play a much larger role in EV appeal than in Europe or North America. In the U.S., incentives and policy support rank significantly lower—a reality many drivers feel directly as subsidies change and charging prices rise.
For me personally, the decision was driven by usability and efficiency. To me, EVs feel intuitive, predictable, and technologically familiar. Ironically, I’m more nervous at a gas station than at a charger—probably the same discomfort many first-time EV drivers feel, just in reverse. (If you’re curious about what long-distance EV travel actually feels like, I documented my road trip experiences in detail here.)
But none of this means EV charging is universally “solved.” It means EVs work extremely well under certain conditions—and far less smoothly under others.
Which brings us back to the core question: How do we compare EV adoption and charging readiness across regions in a meaningful way?
If you were asked to measure EV adoption and charging infrastructure, the instinctive answer would probably be simple: count how many electric vehicles are on the road and how many chargers exist. But as everything we’ve discussed so far shows, it’s not that simple.
Two countries can have a similar number of chargers per EV—and yet deliver completely different charging experiences. Two drivers can own the same car—and have opposite views on whether charging “works.”
To understand whether EVs truly work at scale, we need to add the human layer: how people charge, how often they rely on public infrastructure, how reliable and convenient charging feels, and whether it fits naturally into daily routines.
That is exactly the gap the Roland Berger EV Charging Index is designed to close.
It combines real-world user behavior of 12,000 BEV drivers with infrastructure data to assess how charging actually works in practice. The Index covers 33 countries and tracks development consistently over time, enabling meaningful comparison across regions and across years. In other words: the Index doesn’t just ask how many chargers exist—it asks whether charging actually works for people.
Key dimensions evaluated include:
Figure 3 plots EV sales penetration (how large the share of EVs is in new car sales) on the horizontal axis against the EV Charging Index score (reflecting how well charging infrastructure and user experience support EV use). Each bubble represents a country, with bubble size indicating absolute EV sales volume. It’s interesting that there is no linear relation between EV sales penetration and the EV Charging Index.
Looking at the chart, three leading patterns stand out:
Norway represents the most complete form of EV adoption. With extremely high sales penetration and a strong Charging Index score, EVs in Norway are no longer an alternative—they are the default. High trust, mature infrastructure, and consistent policy signals reinforce each other.
China leads through scale and system-level integration. High EV penetration is matched with a strong Charging Index score and unparalleled sales volume. Dense DC fast-charging networks, policy-driven integration of charging into urban life, and early deployment of solutions like battery swapping create a system where users encounter issues—but keep driving electric anyway.
The U.S. tells a different story. EV sales penetration remains relatively low compared to Europe and China, yet the Charging Index score is comparatively high – suggesting infrastructure readiness ahead of mass adoption. A key driver of this result is Tesla’s Supercharger network, which remains the most reliable and consistently operated fast-charging network in the U.S. and has begun opening to non-Tesla vehicles since 2024–2025, depending on region and vehicle compatibility. At the same time, a large share of early U.S. EV adopters rely on home charging, enabled by driveways and garages. Together, these factors might elevate perceived infrastructure readiness in aggregate metrics, while masking the uneven performance of the broader public charging landscape.
Beyond these leaders, the chart also highlights a group of countries with lower EV sales penetration but relatively high charging readiness—including markets such as India, Indonesia, and South Korea. In these countries, charging infrastructure appears to be ahead of adoption, not behind it. That makes them particularly interesting to watch: once vehicle availability, pricing, or policy signals align, adoption could accelerate quickly—without charging being the limiting factor.
Taken together, the chart makes one thing clear: there is no single path to successful electrification. EV adoption and charging readiness do not always move in lockstep—and understanding where they diverge is exactly what allows better decisions, better policies, and better infrastructure planning.
Let’s make this concrete by zooming in on three regions that illustrate fundamentally different electrification models—and that also happen to mirror my own reference points.
As highlighted in Figure 4, these three regions show that there is no single path to successful electrification—only different systems, shaped by geography, policy, behavior, and infrastructure design.
China combines very high EV adoption (almost 50% of car sales are BEV or PHEV) with a strong Charging Index score. Nearly 99% of Chinese BEV drivers plan to buy another EV. This confidence is driven not only by scale and speed, but by deliberate cost control across the charging ecosystem. Dense urban charging, a high share of DC fast charging, integrated “charging while parked,” and early scaling of battery swapping are paired with electricity pricing structures that keep public charging affordable.
As Roland Berger’s Jack Zhuang notes, China’s lead in EV charging is as much economic as it is technological:
“China’s lead in EV charging is not only about scale or technology. Intense competition between charge point operators, government-imposed utility price caps, and off-peak pricing incentives have kept charging costs low. This combination of market dynamics and policy support has been critical in making public charging affordable, reliable, and widely accepted by users.”
— Jack Zhuang
The U.S. shows relatively strong charging readiness (≈70–72) despite much lower EV sales penetration (≈10–12%). This gap reflects an infrastructure landscape that is, in aggregate, ahead of adoption—but unevenly experienced in practice. Home charging plays a central role, enabled by suburban living patterns, garages, and long-distance driving behavior. For households that fit this model, charging works well; for those that do not, friction increases quickly.
Public fast charging further reinforces this divide. High-performing networks—most notably Tesla’s Supercharger network—deliver reliable long-distance travel and elevate perceived charging readiness. However, outside these networks, public charging quality varies significantly by region and operator. Coverage is often concentrated along highways and select urban corridors, leaving gaps in everyday use cases. As a result, national-level readiness scores can obscure substantial regional and user-level disparities.
In the current U.S. market environment, charging readiness is therefore real—but conditional on geography, vehicle platform, and lifestyle fit.
Austria, appearing for the first time in the 2025 Index, shows higher EV adoption (≈25-27%) but a mid-range charging score. Dense cities, apartment living, and reliance on public and semi-private AC charging create more complexity—even as adoption continues to rise.
Europe’s challenge is not whether EVs work—it is how to scale public charging without increasing friction. Across many European markets, credible charging networks are already in place. However, high public charging costs, pricing complexity, and inconsistent user experience increasingly shape adoption dynamics. In dense environments, reliability, transparency, and affordability matter as much as physical availability.
As Roland Berger’s Adam Healy observes, the next phase of EV charging is no longer defined by infrastructure volume alone:
“Across much of Europe and North America, EV charging is no longer primarily a challenge of sheer infrastructure—it’s an economics and experience challenge. Markets like the UK have built credible networks and moved into the front of the following pack, but high public charging costs and inconsistent user experience risk slowing adoption. The next phase of EV charging will not be won by adding more charge points alone; value will shift toward pricing models, reliability, and optimising economics around scale.”
In both the U.S. and Europe, the data suggests a transition point: from building infrastructure to optimising systems that people can afford, trust, and use at scale.
This is the part I personally relate to most.
I’m pro-EV and deeply convinced that electrification is the right direction. And yet, I’ve had road trips where everything went wrong at once—long lines, broken chargers, cold weather, delays piling up. For an experienced driver, it’s frustrating. For a new EV driver, it can be decisive.
This is why it’s important to distinguish between how charging feels in specific moments and what the data shows over time.
Here are three of the most commonly discussed “beliefs” I encounter and how the Roland Berger Charging Index data helps to understand what really happens.
One of the strongest beliefs around EV charging is this: EVs only really work if you can charge at home.
The logic sounds convincing. If you can plug in overnight in your garage, charging is cheap, predictable, and almost invisible. If you can’t, charging must be inconvenient, expensive, and stressful—and therefore EVs must be impractical.
I’ve lived squarely inside that assumption myself. With a driveway, a garage, and home charging, I rarely encounter the friction points people associate with EV charging. From that perspective, it’s easy to believe that home charging dominates—and that everything else is just a backup for road trips.
The data tells a more interesting story.
According to the Roland Berger EV Charging Index, roughly half of all EV charging globally happens away from home—even in markets with high home-charger availability.
Clearly, public charging is not just a backup solution. It is an integral part of everyday EV use—someone once described it to me like the roots of a tree.
As shown in Figure 5b, charging while shopping is the most common public charging location across regions, followed by highway charging. This means charging is increasingly designed to happen while people are already parked—shopping, working, or running errands—not as a separate task.
Workplace charging, in particular, represents an often-overlooked solution that can bridge the gap for people without home charging access. I’ve written extensively about how to set up EV charging at work, including the benefits for both employers and employees, choosing the right equipment, and our own experience installing workplace charging infrastructure.
Finally, around 20% of all charging happens at fast chargers. And if you ask me personally, this is where most of today’s charging frustrations are concentrated—and where the debate about whether EV charging infrastructure is “ready” becomes most intense.
Stories about broken chargers, long queues, and failed charging attempts are everywhere—and many of them are true. I’ve experienced this myself, including moments where charging infrastructure felt fragile, unreliable, and anything but seamless. These experiences matter, especially because a single bad encounter can disproportionately shape how people feel about electric vehicles as a whole.
That is why the dominant narrative today often sounds like this: EV charging is fundamentally broken.
What makes this narrative powerful is that it is rooted in real frustration. But what makes it incomplete is that it rarely reflects how charging is evolving globally—and how most drivers actually experience it over time.
What the Data Shows: Satisfaction Is Rising, Not Falling
According to the Roland Berger EV Charging Index, overall charging satisfaction has increased year over year, rather than declined.
Globally, nearly 9 out of 10 battery-electric vehicle drivers report being satisfied with their charging experience. Importantly, these satisfaction scores reflect overall charging experiences across home, workplace, and public charging. When dissatisfaction does arise, the data shows it is disproportionately linked to public charging performance, rather than to EV technology or private charging solutions.
Overall, the data also shows that this charging satiasfaction hides significant regional variation:
This matters because it shows that dissatisfaction is not universal—it is contextual. In many markets, infrastructure is expanding, DC fast-charging networks are growing, and reliability is improving year over year.
The problem is not that charging “doesn’t work.” The problem is that it doesn’t work equally well everywhere, for everyone.
Figure 6 adds an important layer of nuance. Across regions, the most commonly reported problems are not about EV technology itself, but about how charging is implemented, operated, and perceived.
What differs significantly by region is which issues dominate.
Across all regions, the most common problem categories include:
What’s striking is that users report these issues and still express high overall satisfaction. This suggests that occasional problems do not automatically translate into a negative charging experience—especially where alternatives and redundancy exist.
This is one of the most emotionally charged criticisms of EVs—and one I hear constantly.
The expectation is often implicit but powerful: Charging should feel like refueling. If it doesn’t, something must be wrong.
From that perspective, anything that takes longer than a few minutes feels like a failure—especially on road trips, during peak travel times, or in cold weather. I’ve felt this frustration myself, particularly when fast charging is slower than expected or queues form. I’ve stood at a charger in -10°C Wisconsin waiting for it to recognize my car, so I understand viscerally why “charger doesn’t fit” and slow speeds rank so high in user complaints.
But the data adds important context.
What the Data Shows: Speed Is Improving—but Speed Alone Is Not the Bottleneck
According to the Roland Berger EV Charging Index, perceived charging speed has improved year over year across most regions, in parallel with:
Yet charging speed remains one of the most frequently cited pain points—not because charging is objectively slow everywhere, but because expectations are rising faster than infrastructure can fully match in all situations.
The Index highlights a crucial distinction:
Most frustrations around “slow charging” are situational, not systemic.
They occur when:
In other words, the problem is often not peak charging capability, but consistency and predictability.
If there is one overarching takeaway from the Roland Berger EV Charging Index, it is this:
Charging success looks very different depending on where you live, how you drive, and how charging fits into daily life. The comparison between regions makes this especially clear:
Seeing these models side by side makes it obvious that EV adoption and charging readiness do not always move in lockstep—and that there is no universal path every region will follow.
This is exactly why I find a report like this so valuable.
So many discussions about EV charging are dominated by individual stories—often extreme ones. Those experiences matter, but on their own they rarely tell the full story. What this Index does well is connect real user behavior with hard infrastructure data, and then place both in a regional context.
I also appreciate that the report works with user personas. When you read it closely, you can usually recognize yourself—or someone you know—in the data. Whether you charge mostly at home, rely on public charging, live in a dense city, or drive long suburban distances, there is a perspective in the report that reflects that reality.
It makes clear that charging “works” or “doesn’t work” not in theory, but in very specific everyday contexts.
For the full Roland Berger EV Charging Index 2025 report and detailed country breakdowns, visit Roland Berger’s website.
Have thoughts on EV charging in your region? I’d love to hear your experience—leave a comment below or reach out directly.
Anything else you would like to know?
#EV Electrified Veronika
Expertise, Empathy, Enthusiasm
If you’re interested not only in driving electric but also in how EV batteries are manufactured, recycled and reused, check out the resources at Electrification Academy — our B2B knowledge platform for battery technology and electrification.
May 2025 ✨ Looks like I’m officially an Aurelia Star 🤩 — and I couldn’t be more grateful. This recognition comes through the Aurelia Academy
