Tesla Priced the Megacharger. Daimler Priced the Fine.

The global view

IAA Transportation in Hanover was meant to be a truck show. It turned into a price list. Tesla put €163,000 on a Megacharger and named 21 European sites for 2027. Germany moved its billion-euro motorway truck network into implementation. Daimler Truck's CEO priced the other side of the ledger: a 10% miss on the EU's CO2 target would cost Mercedes-Benz Trucks roughly €1.2 billion.

Her case is that the chargers are missing, and she quoted the 35,000 megawatt points we did the arithmetic on a fortnight ago. On Tuesday we published our own map of where Europe's electric trucks will actually stop. It lands on about 2,650 megawatt bays by 2030, on twenty roads. Germany's plan alone holds some 1,800 MCS points, so the charger count is closer than the lobby says. The trucks, at a 2% share last year, are not.

The quieter thread is the battery, both beside the charger and inside the car. Xpeng's first megawatt station draws under 240 kW from Hong Kong's grid, Milence demonstrated MCS with 2 MWh of storage alongside, and China targeted 50 GW of adjustable vehicle-grid capacity by 2030. Owners at a Beijing pilot earn a spread of 0.4 to 1 yuan per kWh. That rhymes with what we measured in Europe: a few hundred euros a year per car, not a second salary.

Europe

Three weeks ago our headline had Europe finding €1 billion for truck charging it could not yet spend. This week a German billion got an address. The transport ministry launched implementation of its motorway truck network, with five contractors planning the first 124 unstaffed rest areas. The full build is about 350 sites and 4,200 charge points, 1,800 of them MCS, against the 355 truck charge points the VDA counted a fortnight ago.

Tesla arrived with 21 public sites and more than 100 MCS points for 2027 across Germany, France, Benelux, the UK and Sweden. The posts deliver 1.2 MW, more than the European Semi's 800 kW peak can take. It also published a price, which is not this industry's habit: €163,000 for a Megacharger (one report says that buys a pair) and €17,000 for a 120 kW Basecharger, on sale to fleets from mid-2027.

Last week Alpitronic wheeled a 1 MW cabinet onto a Berlin show floor. This week it found a customer, at least in principle: Milence signed a memorandum of understanding to deploy the HYC1000 along TEN-T corridors in its 15 markets. Milence demonstrated MCS charging with Daimler Truck, MAN and Scania, buffered by a 1 MW/2 MWh battery. A memorandum is not a purchase order, but it points the right way.

Then Daimler Truck's Karin Rådström did the fine arithmetic out loud: €120 million per percentage point missed, about €1.2 billion for a 10% shortfall. She wants the EU rules revised early. Her evidence is fewer than 2,000 public truck charge points, a looser count than the 730 above 350 kW that we used, and a 2% battery-electric share of heavy trucks in 2025.

In August Britain blinked on cars. Now a truck maker is asking Brussels to blink on trucks, in the same week it charged one at a megawatt on the Milence stand. Last week's BCG numbers said Europe might build the chargers and still wait for the trucks. Our corridor map points the same way: the gap is twenty specific roads, not 35,000 plugs.

Away from Hanover, Ireland's Ezo closed a £128.5 million investment-grade, non-recourse debt facility led by Aberdeen Investments and Standard Life. It funds about 3,000 charge points, mostly under long-term local authority concessions. Last week we said the money was chasing contracted kilowatt-hours, and pension capital evidently agrees. As we argued in March, control of the ground is the moat. Majority owner Rubicon is eyeing a 2028 IPO.

North America

Tesla's home-market news was a logistics trick. Its first 'Accordion' Supercharger ships 16 pre-assembled V4 stalls on one truck, installs about 20% cheaper and needs no trenching. It needs the help. Annual connector growth has slid from 35-45% to about 17% since the Supercharger team was fired in 2024. That is the slow build we set against BYD's pace three weeks ago.

On trucks, Tesla will run public Megachargers at three of Forum Mobility's four new California depots, in Ontario and Oakland. The fourth is reserved for more than 330 Tesla Semis. A fortnight ago we counted 20 dedicated truck charging sites in the whole country, so three more public ones is not a rounding error.

IONNA, the eight-automaker joint venture, topped J.D. Power's fast-charging ranking with 1,400 bays at about 177 sites. Its target is 30,000 bays by 2030. By our arithmetic that is more than 120 new bays a week, in a market where Q2 EV sales fell 20.5%. Winning on satisfaction at small scale is the easy half of execution.

New York picked Brooklyn's it's electric to take kerbside charging from 88 points to nearly 700 over three years. The chargers are sited for rideshare drivers ahead of the 2030 mandate that every Uber and Lyft trip be electric or accessible. Uber, tidily, is among the startup's investors. The federal money we called frozen last week turns out to be thawing, minus nearly $1 billion redirected to other highway programmes. North Carolina just awarded $14.4 million for seven sites.

UL Solutions opened certification for AC bidirectional chargers, which use the car's own inverter and should cost far less than DC units. Europe already has commercial AC V2G from Renault and BMW. Whether the revenue justifies the hardware is the question our V2X deep dive tried to answer.

China

With the fleet nearing 50 million EVs, China is scaling vehicle-to-grid from 32 pilots in nine cities towards a national target of 50 GW of adjustable capacity by 2030, from 10 GW last year. State Grid estimates that 10% of EVs participating would yield 86 GW of flexibility. That is more than all the country's pumped storage.

The obstacles are refreshingly mundane. Communication standards are fragmented, transmission fees are not refunded when a car discharges, and carmakers are nervous about battery warranties. These are the frictions we found when we measured Europe's parked fleet. The physics works, and the contract terms decide whether anyone bothers.

The megawatt race we followed to Berlin last week reached Hong Kong. Xpeng's first X-Energy station delivers 1 MW to any brand. It keeps grid draw under 240 kW with 400 kWh of on-site storage. Europe is next, with a plan for over 1,000 stations in 13 countries. One detail worth the footnote: no Xpeng production car can accept 1 MW yet.

Roland Berger's index says the world added about 1.1 million public charge points in 2025, slightly fewer than in 2024, as the market shifts from network size to high-power throughput. That is the global version of what we noted a fortnight ago. China has stopped counting sockets and started counting what they deliver.

India

IEEFA took a calculator to the PM E-DRIVE charging subsidy. The result: ₹2,000 crore funds about 18,811 charge points, under 2% of the 1.32 million India needs by 2030. The scheme's own stated target is roughly 72,000. One of those two numbers was set before anyone priced a grid connection, which can be half a station's cost.

The bigger problem is what already exists. IEEFA cites an earlier study that found 84% of sampled Delhi chargers non-functional, and Rubix puts utilisation at 1-5%. The sources cannot even agree on the base: 52,718 points in July or 67,657 in August. IEEFA's fix is to tie subsidies to verified uptime, which is our execution score written as policy.

Capital is arriving regardless. Tata, Reliance and Adani have nearly quadrupled their combined network to about 19,000 points since FY23, though the state oil companies still hold 37% of public four-wheeler charging. At 1-5% utilisation, ChargeZone's contracts-first approach from last week looks less like caution and more like the only model that pencils.

Rest of Asia

BYD's flash-charging export story, which we picked up three weeks ago, has an unexpected first stop. Cambodia says it is the first country outside China licensed to operate the technology, with 18 stations due in Phnom Penh, Sihanoukville and Siem Reap by year-end. Meanwhile local operators say a rule forcing them to buy their own transformers has cost over $20 million across 182 stations. The welcome mat is selective.

Japan raised its ceiling. A 350 kW-per-connector CHAdeMO charger went live at Ebina service area, the first expressway deployment of the unit. PowerX is upgrading its battery-integrated stations to 1,000 V and 240 kW, with about 20 sites due by the end of 2026. Terra Charge will invest up to ¥30 billion to grow its fast-charging network fivefold, citing monthly sales growth of 10-20% in a market everyone had written off.

Vietnam is doing the unglamorous part first. Hanoi surveyed 150 inner-city car parks and found about 40 that can take chargers. Ho Chi Minh City forecasts a need for 17,000-23,000 public car chargers by 2030. That survey is what a location score looks like when a city runs one before the concrete goes in.

Oceania

Hanover thought 1 MW was the headline. In the Pilbara, Fortescue is trialling 6 MW. BHP slowed its electric haul truck rollout, citing up to eight 30-minute charging stops a day against one 15-minute diesel refuel. It now expects 2035 emissions a third above forecast. Fortescue, with over 300 electric haul trucks planned, says judging charge time in isolation misses total cost. One of them is wrong by several billion dollars.

The copper thieves we met in France in August have colleagues in Australia. Cable theft is spreading across Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland. One Toowoomba driver's only compatible Evie chargers were stripped repeatedly, despite a forensic-liquid deterrent on trial. The French tried methylene blue. Nobody has yet found the dye that beats a bolt cutter.

The network is already strained. A HERE/SBD index counts 24 EVs per public charger. At home the picture is healthier. Evnex installed its second 10,000 chargers in nine months after taking eight years over the first. Amber's V2G programme added the BYD Sealion 7 with battery warranty intact, and 8,000 people are on the waitlist. China's pilots list warranty as a barrier, and here BYD simply signed it away.

Buses keep electrifying without fuss. JET Charge and Kempower finished 112 plugs at Perth's Karrinyup depot, and Kinetic lifted its Sunshine West depot in Melbourne to 66-bus capacity.

South America

A thin week, with one story that belongs in this column more than it seems. UrbanV named five São Paulo vertiport sites, and ENGIE is assessing the grid connection at each. Every pad needs at least 1 MW of charging, busy sites up to 5 MW, and utility upgrades take two to five years.

So an air taxi pad has the same problem as a truck bay, and the same workaround: a battery buffer. In July we watched Florida fund flying taxis on the theory that its charging corridors were finished. São Paulo is at least starting with the substation.

Africa

Ghana's transformer story moved up the chain of command. Three weeks ago the energy minister said unregulated fast chargers had blown transformers. Now President Mahama confirmed that siting rules tied to local transformer and substation capacity are heading to Cabinet, with a nudge towards solar-powered charging. Not everyone is convinced, and the first sceptical op-ed has already landed.

East Africa is testing the opposite extreme. Kenya Power, BasiGo and Advanced Mobility Africa will run an electric bus 1,600 km from Nairobi to Addis Ababa, a corridor with no public charging today. For context, a UN survey counts 235 stations in Kenya, second to Egypt's 300. More than 25 African countries have none.

Nigeria's NNPC Retail promises 50 to 70 multi-energy stations within six months, combining fuel, EV charging, LPG and solar. Costs and financing are undisclosed, and earlier NNPC rollouts of EV charging and CNG stalled. We will count these when they open.