New Zealand is falling behind in public EV chargers

Fleet Management

With nearly 1.8 million public charging points built worldwide in 2025, the global total now nears 7 million, but the pace of infrastructure rollout varies dramatically from country to country.

To provide a clearer picture of the charging power available to EV drivers, the team at TradingPlatforms analysed data from the International Energy Agency's Global EV Outlook 2026, including figures for the number of electric vehicles (BEV and PHEV), as well as the number of public charging stations rated slow, fast, and ultra-fast across 46 countries.

New Zealand was the fourth worst of the countries included in the data with 88 EVs per charger, one factor in New Zealand’s favour is that New Zealanders have high access to at home charging. With the current fast growth in EV and PHEV numbers this will likely get worse before it gets better.

These are the countries with the most EVs per public charging station:

(Total BEV + PHEV EV stock vs. total public charging points, 2025)

•             Uruguay - 25,900 EVs and 160 public charging points (162 EVs per charger)

•             United Arab Emirates - 213,700 EVs and 1,400 public charging points (153 EVs per charger)

•             Philippines - 35,035 EVs and 274 public charging points (128 EVs per charger)

•             New Zealand - 129,992 EVs and 1,470 public charging points (88 EVs per charger)

•             Singapore - 51,000 EVs and 1,223 public charging points (42 EVs per charger)

•             Indonesia - 185,800 EVs and 4,620 public charging points (40 EVs per charger)

•             Australia - 434,000 EVs and 11,100 public charging points (39 EVs per charger)

•             Norway - 1,109,000 EVs and 31,200 public charging points (36 EVs per charger)

These are the countries with the fewest EVs per public charging station:

•             Korea - 994,000 EVs and 491,160 public charging points (2 EVs per charger)

•             India - 433,000 EVs and 88,000 public charging points (5 EVs per charger)

•             Netherlands - 1,253,900 EVs and 207,300 public charging points (6 EVs per charger)

•             Greece - 59,000 EVs and 8,640 public charging points (7 EVs per charger)

•             Belgium - 781,730 EVs and 95,200 public charging points (8 EVs per charger)

•             Russia - 84,020 EVs and 9,899 public charging points (8 EVs per charger)

•             Viet Nam - 280,240 EVs and 32,000 public charging points (9 EVs per charger)

•             China - 44,380,000 EVs and 4,680,000 public charging points (9 EVs per charger)

“Countries fall behind on EV charging when adoption moves faster than infrastructure investment. Building chargers ahead of demand requires governments and operators to take on significant upfront costs, but markets such as the Philippines and Uruguay show how quickly a charging gap can emerge when EV uptake surges. By contrast, countries such as South Korea, India, and the Netherlands have invested heavily enough to ensure charging infrastructure is growing ahead of demand.” - comments Martin Tunchev, analyst at TradingPlatforms

He continues “However, the number of chargers alone doesn’t tell the whole story. Home-charging availability, population density, geography, and charger speed all shape how much pressure is placed on public infrastructure. Ultimately, the countries best positioned for continued EV growth will be those that expand charging capacity in line with, or ahead of, the growth of their EV fleets.”

More information on the number of electric vehicles and charging stations around the world, as well as the complete methodology behind our findings, can be found in the full report  The raw dataset is also available on Google Drive via this link

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