Europe’s EV boom needs intelligence more than chargers
Yusuf Latief
Posted on: 30 March 2026
As Europe races to electrify transport, piling in high-power chargers won’t be enough. Rather, it's smart charging and fleet energy management that will be key.
AFRY's Steffen Schaefer and Yasmine Assef argue that while high-power charging continues to dominate investment strategies, the real gains will come from making charging more intelligent—particularly as grid constraints begin to bite.
“There’s a need for high-power chargers, no doubt,” said Schaefer, Head of Future Cities and Mobility.
“But not everything can be solved with more copper and more expensive infrastructure. At some point, people won’t be willing to pay for it.”
Instead, energy advisory company AFRY points to a broader toolbox of solutions: dynamic pricing, load management, local generation and stationary storage. Taken together, these approaches could reduce pressure on the grid while allowing operators to extract more value from existing assets.
This shift is becoming increasingly urgent as charge point operators race to deploy infrastructure. Backed by fresh capital and under pressure to secure prime locations, many are moving ahead regardless of whether the grid is ready.
“The reality is they won’t wait,” said Assef, who is Senior Principal with AFRY.
“They have raised funds, they have commitments, and they need to build. If intelligent charging isn’t implemented properly, then at some point there will be bottlenecks.”
With diesel, it was a level playing field. Everyone paid the same price. But for electricity, it's not the case.
In that scenario, operators may turn to on-site battery storage to compensate for limited grid connections—effectively creating a parallel, decentralised energy system. While that may offer a short-term fix, it risks undermining coordinated grid planning if left unchecked.
“We could end up with batteries everywhere,” Assef warned. “A kind of secondary network developing alongside the grid.”
There are already signs of this shift. Schaefer points to projects, particularly in southern Europe, where developers are deliberately building charging hubs on cheaper land with weak or non-existent grid connections, pairing them with local generation and storage.
Fleet implications
For fleet operators, the implications are more complex: charging is increasingly becoming an integrated energy management challenge. Depots must now consider how EVs interact with other loads, on-site generation and storage systems.
“Fleet operators and site owners need to consider more than the charging infrastructure and just their own fleet,” Schaefer said. “They need to think about this in a wider sense and look at the other consumers in that area, local energy generation, stationary batteries and bring it all together.”
Some early movers are already doing exactly that. Schaefer cited how logistics companies, for example, are beginning to treat electrification as a competitive advantage. With volatile fuel prices exposing the limits of diesel-based operations, electricity offers a new variable—one that can be actively managed.
“The faster they can learn about how these new energy systems work, with renewable energies, batteries, and intelligent charging, the faster they will realise it's going to bring them ahead of their competitor.
“With diesel, it was a level playing field. Everyone paid the same price. But for electricity, it's not the case. Forward-looking fleet operators that do a good job in energy management will pay a very different price.”
That shift is also opening up new opportunities for flexibility. As EV adoption accelerates, the aggregated load from vehicles—particularly commercial fleets—could become a significant resource for the power system.
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Fleet flexibility and V2G
According to Assef, AFRY estimates that by 2030, Europe could have around 50 million EVs on the road, consuming roughly 150TWh of electricity annually. A substantial share of that demand is expected to come from business-to-business fleets, where charging patterns are often more predictable.
Not all of that load will be flexible, but even a fraction could have a meaningful impact.
“Maybe 20 to 50% can realistically be used in a flexible way,” Assef said. “That’s already a huge amount when you compare it to the overall system.”
The degree of flexibility, however, varies widely depending on use case. Long-haul trucks operating nearly continuously offer limited scope, while assets such as school buses—idle for large portions of the day and year—represent a far greater opportunity.
For 100 years, grid operators were used to having direct control over the assets of the electrical system, and suddenly they have something that is, first of all, moving around, and second, they are not in control of it completely.
Despite this potential, several barriers continue to slow the deployment of advanced solutions such as smart charging and vehicle-to-grid (V2G).
A lack of regulatory harmonisation across Europe remains a key issue. Differences in grid codes complicate the rollout of interoperable technologies, particularly for manufacturers aiming to scale across multiple markets.
Smart metering infrastructure is another bottleneck. While essential for accurately measuring bidirectional energy flows, it remains underdeveloped in several major markets.
Interoperability between vehicles, chargers and platforms also remains immature, with standards still evolving. At the same time, grid operators—long accustomed to controlling centralised assets—are still adjusting to the idea of relying on distributed, mobile resources.
Tech acceptance
Assef pointed out a trust element: “Grid operators are not completely convinced that they can rely on EVs.
“For 100 years, they were used to having direct control over the assets of the electrical system, and suddenly they have something that is, first of all, moving around, and second, they are not in control of it completely.
“This makes this evolution slower than what could be expected.”
She adds how, on the vehicle side, the picture is equally mixed: “While some manufacturers are investing in bidirectional capabilities, others remain unconvinced of the business case—particularly in the heavy-duty segment, where uptime is critical.”
We’ve been talking about vehicle-to-grid for 10 years now, but it is still untapped potentially.
“There are OEMs who don’t believe in it yet,” Schaefer said. “They see trucks as needing to run all the time, which limits how they think about flexibility. But most rucks are parked at least overnight and during weekends.”
Yet both speakers agree that the core technologies required to unlock EV flexibility are already available. The challenge now lies in scaling them—and in aligning the different actors needed to make the system work.
“Cars are ready. Chargers are ready. Aggregators are there,” Assef said. “They have to work together to demonstrate that they can rely on EVs. And I think that this joint collaboration is also something that is still missing.”
Making existing solutions work
Looking ahead, Assef and Schaefer see few entirely new breakthroughs on the horizon. Rather, the focus will need to be on making existing solutions work at scale—alongside a handful of complementary innovations.
Battery swapping for heavy-duty vehicles is one such area of interest. While unlikely to dominate, Schaefer believes it could play a supporting role, particularly as charging sites increasingly deploy large stationary storage systems.
“We already see a lot of stationary battery capacity at charging locations,” he said. “Using that for swapping could be a natural extension.”
For Assef, the biggest untapped opportunity remains one that the industry has been discussing for over a decade.
“We’ve been talking about vehicle-to-grid for 10 years now, but it is still untapped potentially,” she said. “We already have a massive amount of battery capacity in EVs—far more than stationary storage. The potential is there. We just need to make it work.”
