The halved sales of electric vehicles, which could be read about in our media space at the beginning of the year, have caused the opposite effect in the market of charging station operators. The latest available data shows that during this year, up to the end of May, an additional 537 ‘little currents’ have arrived on Croatian roads, which is almost 33 percent less than the previous year. However, the fact that the share of electric cars in the total number of newly registered vehicles in the Croatian market has fallen from three to 1.8 percent does not concern companies engaged in charging such cars at all.
Moreover, there are currently as many as 17 companies operating in Croatia that provide charging services, ranging from large international players to domestic corporations and companies registered as simple limited liability companies (j.d.o.o.). Statistics show that the local market is above average fragmented compared to European standards. Currently, there are 8,500 electric vehicles registered in Croatia, with 1,700 publicly available charging points, which means that there is an average of about a hundred charging points per operator. In comparison, there are currently seven million electric vehicles in Europe, which are powered by 600,000 public charging stations. These charging stations are managed by about a thousand operators, meaning each operator manages about 600 charging stations on average. In other words, there is six times more ‘crowding’ among operators in the Croatian market than in the rest of Europe.
Regulation Accelerated Industry Development
The ‘crowding’ is welcome as it ensures competitiveness, from which users of such chargers benefit the most, believes Hrvoje Prpić, president of the association Strujni krug, which brings together electric vehicle owners.
– The topic of e-mobility is hot and is only heating up, both globally, in Europe, and in Croatia. We expect that these 17 operators will continue to increase the capacities of existing ones and expand the number of new locations with chargers. This can only benefit the adoption of e-mobility in Croatia – explains Prpić.
According to him, Croatia has enough chargers in relation to the number of vehicles, but in relation to the population, we lag behind EU trends.
– There are even enough destination and slow urban chargers, but certainly, more ultra-fast chargers for longer trips would be welcome. Fortunately, by the end of the year, a significant number of such chargers from new companies will appear in Croatia – announces Prpić.
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