You Don't Need a Driveway to Go Electric: The European Cities Solving EV Charging for Apartment Dwellers

The Chicken-and-Egg Problem That Has Held Europe Back

For the roughly 46% of EU citizens who live in flats, according to Eurostat, the path to electric mobility has always looked narrower. No private parking means no wallbox. No wallbox means no overnight charging. And without overnight charging, the perceived convenience gap between an EV and a petrol car widens considerably.

This dynamic creates a classic deadlock: municipalities see little reason to invest in on-street charging when EV adoption is low, but adoption stays low precisely because the infrastructure is not there. Breaking this cycle requires one side to move first — and increasingly, cities across Europe are deciding that side should be the public sector.

The results are already visible. Several European capitals have built functional, scalable models that make apartment-dweller EV ownership not just possible, but genuinely convenient. Here is how they did it.

Amsterdam: Charging Infrastructure on Demand

The Dutch capital has quietly become the global benchmark for public EV charging. Amsterdam now operates over 12,000 public charging points, a figure that continues to climb. But the real innovation lies not in the numbers — it is in how those chargers get deployed.

The city's "laadpaal op aanvraag" system — literally charging point on request — lets any resident without private parking submit a formal request for a public charger near their home. If the location is technically feasible, the city installs an AC charging station within walking distance, typically within a few months. The process is straightforward: residents register their EV and address, the municipality evaluates the site, and a contractor handles the installation.

The impact has been measurable. Surveys indicate that more than 60% of new EV buyers in Amsterdam do not have a private parking space. The "you need a driveway" barrier simply dissolved once the infrastructure caught up.

Amsterdam couples this with an intelligent parking policy: EV drivers get priority for residential parking permits, and dedicated charging bays are reserved exclusively for active charging — meaning they are not blocked by non-EV vehicles or fully charged cars that have overstayed their welcome.

Norway: The Law Says You Must

Norway took a characteristically direct approach. Since 2021, national legislation has required all residential buildings with more than 50 parking spaces to install charging infrastructure. The law stops short of mandating a charger at every bay, but it does require that the cabling, conduits, and distribution boards be ready for rapid, low-cost rollout.

The logic is simple: laying conduit and pulling cable during construction or major renovation costs a fraction of what retrofitting does later. Once the backbone is in place, adding individual wallboxes becomes a matter of hours and a few hundred euros — not weeks of construction and permit applications.

The results speak for themselves. Norway now sees over 90% of new car sales being fully electric, a figure that would be impossible if apartment dwellers were locked out. Legislation simply aligned the built environment with where the market was already heading.

London: The Streets Already Wired

London's approach is perhaps the most elegant — because it repurposes infrastructure that was already there. The UK capital has turned to its network of public street lamps.

Ubitricity, a Shell subsidiary and now the UK's largest public EV charging operator, has installed over 14,400 public charging points across the country, with more than 19,300 across Europe. A significant share of these are compact AC chargers integrated directly into existing lamp posts. There is no need to dig up pavements, pour new concrete, or install bulky standalone units. A technician retrofits the lamp post with a charging socket, connects it to the existing electrical supply, and the job is done — often in under an hour.

Drivers simply park next to the lamp post, plug in using their own cable, and activate the session through a mobile app. By morning, the car is fully charged. The cost is comparable to other forms of public AC charging — and still significantly cheaper per kilometre than petrol or diesel.

London's rollout has been supported by the national On-street Residential Chargepoint Scheme (ORCS), which provides funding specifically for local authorities to install chargers in residential areas where off-street parking is unavailable. The model has proven so successful that Ubitricity recently completed a rollout of 2,000 charge points in a single London borough — Tower Hamlets — in under four months.

Germany and France: Building Codes for an Electric Future

Germany's GEIG law (Gebäude-Elektromobilitätsinfrastruktur-Gesetz), effective since 2021, mandates that every new parking space in a residential building must be pre-wired for a wallbox. The same applies during major renovations. This means the marginal cost of adding a charger later is negligible — the expensive part, running high-capacity electrical lines through concrete, is already done.

France went further with a law requiring that all buildings with more than ten parking spaces enable charging on at least 20% of them. Paris complemented this with its own Belib' charging network, which deploys thousands of AC stations across the city, deliberately concentrating them in dense residential neighbourhoods where off-street parking is rare.

The EU-Wide Push: EPBD Brings Charging Infrastructure to Every Member State

The biggest lever, however, is the revised Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD), which entered into force in May 2024 and must be transposed into national law by all member states by 29 May 2026. The directive explicitly requires:

• At least one charging point in all new residential buildings and those undergoing major renovation
• Pre-cabling for at least 50% of parking spaces in residential buildings with more than ten spaces
• Smart charging capability and, where appropriate, bidirectional charging support
• Charging infrastructure in non-residential buildings with more than ten parking spaces

This means that across all 27 EU member states, the legal framework is shifting from "would be nice to have" to "you must build it." The EPBD effectively ends the era in which apartment buildings could be constructed without any consideration for EV charging.

Several Eastern and Central European countries still lag in public charging deployment, and legislative alignment with the EPBD remains uneven. In some EU nations, installing a charger in a shared apartment garage still requires navigating condominium association votes where a single sceptical owner can block the project. But the legal tide is turning — and the deadlines are approaching fast.

The Real Secret: Charging Is Not Like Refuelling

Beyond policy and infrastructure, there is a behavioural shift that cities like Amsterdam and Oslo have quietly enabled. EV drivers do not need to charge the way petrol drivers refuel — making a dedicated trip to a station. Instead, charging becomes a background activity: something that happens while you are shopping, working, sleeping, or watching a film.

Public AC chargers at supermarkets, gyms, cinemas, and on residential streets mean that most drivers rarely need to visit a dedicated fast-charging hub. The car gains range during the natural pauses of daily life. This mental model — treat electricity like a phone, not like petrol — is arguably as important as any piece of legislation or hardware.

Cities that have embraced this philosophy find that even a moderately dense network of AC chargers is sufficient for most residents. The average European car travels under 40 km per day. A single overnight charge on a standard 11 kW AC charger delivers roughly 50–60 km of range per hour — meaning most drivers only need to plug in once or twice a week.

Source: https://www.evmagazin.cz/byt-elektromobil-jde-zahranicni-mesta-vedi-jak-na