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For 72 per cent of German car owners, an electric vehicle is not an option as long as they cannot charge it at home. This makes charging infrastructure a task for property owners, project developers and housing companies.
72% of surveyed German car owners say an electric vehicle is not an option as long as they cannot charge at home.
Housing companies face the tension between growing interest and still limited demand, combined with high investment costs and uncertain payback.
There is no one-size-fits-all solution for multi-apartment buildings. Depending on the building and target group, individual wallboxes, shared charging points, or a combination may make sense.
Charging infrastructure should be planned together with photovoltaics, heat pumps, battery storage, metering, and load management.
Early involvement of the distribution network operator is crucial. Available capacity, other consumers, and charging patterns determine what a site can accommodate.
New-build projects can prepare for future demand through scalable infrastructure without immediately equipping every parking space with a wallbox.
Photo: Wellenhofer Designes
The most important charging point for the wider adoption of electric mobility is not located on the motorway, but at home. According to the DAT Report 20261 for the German automotive market, “Being able to charge at home” was the most important purchase criterion for 45 per cent of private buyers of a new electric car. The picture is even clearer when looking at the market as a whole: 72 per cent of the car owners surveyed say that as long as they cannot charge at home, an electric vehicle is not an option for them.
For Germany’s real estate sector, this creates a new task. Parking spaces are becoming points of energy consumption, while underground car parks are becoming part of a building’s electrical infrastructure. Grid connections, cable routes, metering concepts, billing and load management all need to be considered together. At the same time, current demand remains low in many residential portfolios.
Attractive, but not yet economically viable everywhere
The scale of the gap between general interest and actual demand is illustrated by the study „Laden in Mehrparteienhäusern“ (english: Charging in Multi-Apartment Buildings) by the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI. On average, the private wallbox emerges as the most attractive charging solution. For housing companies, however, demand, utilisation and the refinancing of investment remain difficult to predict.
The study describes a “chicken-and-egg problem”: without electric vehicles, there is no demand for charging points; without charging facilities, fewer residents opt for an electric vehicle. For property owners, the key question is therefore less whether charging infrastructure will become relevant, but rather how much of it should be financed in advance.
“Investment in charging infrastructure is high, while demand is currently still low,” the study states. The companies surveyed feared that the costs would “not pay for themselves, or only do so in the long term”. Fraunhofer project manager Dr Annegret Stephan therefore warns against applying a standard model to every building: “When it comes to charging for residents of multi-apartment buildings, there is no one-size-fits-all solution.” Depending on the building, parking situation and target group, individual wallboxes, shared charging points or a combination of the two may be appropriate. Residents’ willingness to pay also varies. The study recommends “further reducing legal complexity promptly” and providing reliable support for the development of charging infrastructure.
Municipal housing stock: regulation meets low demand
GAG Immobilien AG in Cologne is familiar with this tension. The municipal housing company manages around 46,000 homes, approximately half of which are publicly subsidised. Its portfolio includes almost 350 underground car parks with around 15,000 parking spaces. GAG Servicegesellschaft mbH develops tenant electricity and charging solutions for the group, among other things. Managing Director Sabrina Gulde describes the relationship between regulatory requirements and demand as “an issue that is currently being driven more strongly by regulation than by genuinely broad demand from our tenants”.
The situation cannot be considered without taking the structure of the housing stock into account. Publicly subsidised housing is home to an above-average proportion of households with limited incomes. For them, purchasing an electric vehicle is often not yet a priority investment. A private-sector provider of high-end new-build housing may therefore encounter a different level of demand.
GAG does not install charging infrastructure across its existing portfolio in advance: “In our existing housing stock, we only provide charging facilities in response to demand and where the technical conditions allow,” says Gulde. In new-build developments and larger neighbourhood projects, by contrast, charging infrastructure is incorporated from the outset in line with regulatory requirements. Cable routes and connection capacities can be planned there with significantly less effort than would be required for subsequent retrofitting.
Photo: lamontak590623
The central obstacle remains financing, stresses Managing Director Gulde: “I see economic viability as the biggest challenge. At present, there is no model in which housing companies do not end up paying extra.” This raises a strategic question for housing companies: should charging infrastructure be regarded as a profitable business in its own right, or as part of a building’s facilities, its lettability and its long-term property value?
“I see economic viability as the biggest challenge. At present, there is no model in which housing companies do not end up paying extra.”
Using energy within the neighbourhood
Charging points should not be planned in isolation. At the same time, electricity demand is increasing as a result of heat pumps, photovoltaics, battery storage and other building technologies. This creates new opportunities within neighbourhoods, but also additional requirements for metering and control.
“It would definitely make sense, and the aim should be to use as much locally generated electricity as possible within the neighbourhood,” says Gulde. In Cologne’s district Waldbadviertel, GAG combines photovoltaics, tenant electricity and charging infrastructure. This means that at least some of the electricity generated on site can be consumed within the neighbourhood.
Changes to tenant electricity schemes, customer installations, metering concepts or funding conditions can alter planned business models. For the German real estate sector, planning certainty therefore does not mean that every form of funding must remain in place indefinitely. What matters are reliable rules for investment periods that, in the case of buildings, are considerably longer than political legislative terms.
Involving the network operator at an early stage
Photo: huizhen wei
Whether a project requires a stronger grid connection or can be implemented using the existing connection does not depend solely on the number of wallboxes. The available capacity, other electrical consumers and the timing of charging processes are also decisive.
Netze BW is the largest distribution network operator in Baden-Württemberg. The company operates around 98,000 kilometres of electricity grid and serves approximately 2.37 million network customers. Several NETZlabor projects are investigating how electric mobility can be integrated into real residential areas and apartment buildings.
Dr Martin Zimmerlin, Head of Strategic Network Development at Netze BW, considers blanket limits of little use: “From our perspective, there is no general figure for how many wallboxes a residential neighbourhood can accommodate.” In a single-family home, an individual wallbox can often be integrated without major intervention. In an apartment building, building cabling, meter structures, billing and the coordination of multiple users also need to be considered. For larger installations, managing electrical capacity becomes key.
Not every vehicle needs to charge at full rated power at the same time. Most cars remain parked for many hours overnight. Dynamic load management distributes the available capacity, takes other consumers within the building into account and reduces costly peak loads. In 2021, Netze BW tested this in its NETZlabor E-Mobility-Carré with 63 property owners, 58 charging points and 45 electric vehicles.
According to Zimmerlin, contact with the distribution network operator should take place “as early as possible”, ideally during the concept or preliminary planning phase: “The greatest friction usually arises from late involvement, unclear power requirements and a lack of overall concepts.”
Section 14a EnWG: controlling rather than switching off
Since the beginning of 2024, newly installed controllable consumption devices such as wallboxes and heat pumps have generally been subject to Section 14a of the German Energy Industry Act (EnWG). In the event of an acute overload of the local grid, the distribution network operator may temporarily reduce their power consumption. However, the devices are not switched off completely; in return, operators receive reduced network charges.
Netze BW regards this as an important component in integrating new electricity consumers. At present, however, interventions involving private wallboxes have not yet been necessary within its own network. The key is preparation: controllability can help bridge local bottlenecks, but it cannot replace the grid expansion required in the long term.
For building planning, this means that metering and control technology, communication and load management must not be considered only after the wallbox has been installed. They are part of the overall system design.
Preparing for future demand without building excess capacity
Photo: AvatarKnowmad
In new-build developments, provisions for future expansion can be made with relatively little additional effort. These include sufficiently dimensioned building connections, cable routes, conduits, space in distribution boards and meter cabinets, as well as a scalable control and billing architecture.
Not every prepared parking space needs to be fitted with a wallbox immediately. The basic infrastructure can be designed for the entire car park, while the number of charging points can be increased in line with demand.
The Fraunhofer study also sees this as a possible approach: charging infrastructure could be developed “gradually and according to demand”. Where parking spaces are not permanently allocated to individual homes, a small number of shared charging points may be more economical than equipping every space.
Three projects, three models
Projects in Germany and the UK illustrate how different these solutions can be:
In a residential development in Cologne-Ehrenfeld, the basic electrical infrastructure was installed for all 66 parking spaces. Wallboxes can be added gradually. The project represents the model of “prepare first, activate according to demand”.
In the Lennershof neighbourhood in Bochum, VBW Bauen und Wohnen GmbH decided against individual wallboxes at every parking space following a survey of residents. Four charging stations, each with two charging points, form a bookable shared-charging service. The neighbourhood includes both privately financed and publicly subsidised housing. The solution limits the initial investment and can be expanded as demand increases.
At the Hillside Gardens Estate in the London Borough of Lambeth, cables and electrical components were initially installed as part of a new-build development before the future operator had even been selected. This eliminated the need for additional groundwork when the charging facilities were installed. Between October 2020 and January 2022, 1,455 charging sessions totalling 13,982 kilowatt-hours were recorded there. According to the Energy Saving Trust, the availability of charging also encouraged more residents to switch to an electric vehicle.
All three examples follow the same logic: the long-lasting building infrastructure is prepared at an early stage, while the number of charging points follows actual demand.
From additional amenity to basic technical infrastructure
Photo: photovs
Private charging is neither a single wallbox nor an isolated mobility product. It brings together property planning, electrical building systems, energy supply and network operation. For property owners, the greatest opportunity lies in scalable systems: cable routes planned at an early stage, an expandable connection architecture, dynamic load management and a robust operating and billing model.
Demand may still be low depending on the tenant structure. However, the DAT Report shows how closely the decision to buy an electric vehicle is linked to the availability of charging at home. Where this is lacking, electric mobility is not an option for many households either.
A look across Europe
Norway: Since 2020, residents of owner-occupied apartment buildings and housing cooperatives have generally had the right to install a charging point, provided there are no objective grounds for refusal. Municipalities such as Oslo also provide support for shared basic infrastructure. This encourages centralised systems with load management.
United Kingdom: Part S of the Building Regulations requires a charging point for each dwelling with an associated parking space in many new residential buildings. The Hillside Gardens example in London demonstrates the economic advantage of installing cables at an early stage and selecting an operator at a later date.
Netherlands: Expansion is closely linked to local grid capacity and smart charging. In densely built-up cities, public neighbourhood charging points complement private charging. Controllable systems are becoming increasingly important for property projects due to regional grid constraints.
Michael Hopp
Author for Building. Technology. Solutions.
Michael Hopp believes that everything new is made by people. That’s why he asks them about it.
