Dutch Charging Bays Open to Diesel Cars From August 1: Vattenfall Pilots No-Fine Parking

The bureaucratic bottleneck no one talks about

To follow, you have to understand the Dutch “verkeersbesluit”. In the Netherlands, a public parking space belongs to everyone. To reserve it exclusively for electric cars, the municipality must issue a formal traffic ruling, publish it, and survive a six-week objection period. If a neighbour defends “their” usual spot, the whole process can drag on for months — occasionally ending up in court. The charging hardware itself can go up in hours, but the sign above it saying “alleen elektrische auto’s” is the real bottleneck. Vattenfall InCharge is slicing through that knot by simply not putting up the sign. No exclusive reservation means no traffic ruling, no objections, no delays. The charging bay becomes ordinary street furniture, much like a bicycle rack. The pilot will install 150 open bays and 150 traditional reserved bays as a control group between now and January 2027, then monitor occupancy, complaints, and — crucially — whether installations do get faster when the paperwork vanishes.

From “do not park” to “you can charge here”

The participating municipalities include Tilburg, Weert, Bergen op Zoom, Oosterhout, and Vught. Each open bay is marked either with an adapted traffic sign or ground markings that indicate “you can charge here”, without the word “only”. The underlying assumption is that most drivers — even diesel drivers — are reasonable enough not to block a charger unless there is truly no alternative. Vattenfall’s own survey of roughly 1,000 drivers backs that up, at least on paper. Only 14% of petrol and diesel drivers admitted they would occupy a shared bay for more than two hours. 41% said they would voluntarily move if someone needed to charge, and another 27% would park there only if no other spaces were free. Even among EV drivers, 38% support the idea of shared space as long as they can still charge when needed. The data suggests less of a culture war than the kerbside optics might imply. Still, what people claim in a questionnaire and what they do at 7 PM on a rainy Tuesday with a full shopping basket are two different things. The control group will tell us whether politeness evaporates when it’s cold and the charger is the last free patch of asphalt.

Fast charging progress, kerbside friction

While charging technology pushes toward absurdly fast speeds — Hongqi recently demonstrated an 8‑minute charge — the everyday reality of public AC charging is still defined by who parks in front of the post. The industry is busy launching smart energy platforms (see Hyundai and Kia’s AllDayEnergy brand), but on the street, the main obstacle is often a sign and the months of legal process behind it. Our own supercharger database tracks 483 high-power locations across Europe, but the Dutch pilot deals with slower, kerbside AC chargers — the kind that form the backbone of overnight charging for drivers without a driveway. The charging station map we maintain shows that these are the chargers most likely to be blocked, and the ones that cause the most frustration when they are. Shortening their installation time matters.

Does it even matter in the long run?

The Netherlands already counts 750,000 battery-electric vehicles and over 600,000 plug‑in hybrids. By the time this pilot delivers final results, the ICE share will have shrunk further. In five years, the question of who parks at a charging bay will increasingly answer itself: it will be an EV, because there will be little else on the road. The temporary irritation of a Passat TDI using a charge spot becomes a footnote if the pilot proves that cutting red tape can roll out infrastructure months faster. That learning could travel well. Approval delays are not a Dutch speciality. If Vattenfall demonstrates that shared bays are built noticeably quicker and the downsides are manageable, other European cities with similar bureaucratic layers may borrow the approach.

What an EV owner should actually do

If you live in or regularly drive through one of the pilot municipalities, expect a mix of open and reserved bays by early 2027. Check markings before relying on a spot. In the meantime, if you want to avoid the kerbside guessing game entirely, use our charging cost calculator to find public points with real-time availability — and at least know what you’ll pay per kWh if the bay is free. And if you’re planning a longer trip, the Bjørn Nyland real-world range data can help you budget your stops better than any navigation system alone. The Vattenfall experiment may feel like a step backward to EV loyalists, but in truth it’s a rare test of whether infrastructure roll-out can be decoupled from parking politics. If the answer is yes, it’s worth a few months of sharing.

Source: https://www.electrive.com/2026/07/30/dutch-charging-stations-to-open-parking-bays-to-internal-combustion-vehicles/