Global EV charging deployment continues as China sees installation slump

Created on 04.17

Chinese DC installations dropped below 20,000 for the first time since June 2025

China reached a cumulative 4.4 million EV chargers installed at the end of 2025, with December 2025 seeing a total 87,000 installations split almost equally across charger types.

While February’s slump can be attributed in part to the Chinese New Year holiday falling in the latter part of the month, the first two months of 2026 have seen the EV market down by 26%.

Europe and US EV charging outlook

Elsewhere, installations continue to grow in 2026, supporting increasing EV uptake as the technology becomes an economic imperative in the face of soaring fuel costs resulting from the crisis in the Middle East.

BMI’s figures show 14,047 new AC chargers were installed across the EU, EFTA and UK regions combined, with France contributing just 28 new chargers, while the UK installed 1,477.

The decline in French AC chargers comes after a huge January for the country, when it installed 3,917 AC chargers, a record for deployment. French deployment was also somewhat anomalous compared to the other regions BMI tracks, in that DC charger installations were higher than AC; France installed 878 of the slower chargers.

Meanwhile, in the Netherlands just one new DC charger went in, with 3,152 AC chargers installed.

BMI’s figures for North America (formerly classified as US and Canada in its database) show a similar number of each technology type installed during February, with 1,498 AC chargers and 1,259 DC chargers installed.

For DC, this is an uptick from January, which saw 1,143 installations, but a drop for AC from 1,939 installations the month previous.

The conflict in the Middle East has driven up oil and raw material costs, which BMI notes strengthens the economic case for EV adoption. This has been widely agreed upon since fuel prices first began rising.

However, the conflict is also driving high prices and supply pressures across the European EV charging infrastructure ecosystem.

BMI noted that copper surged in early 2026, driving the copper-to-aluminium price ratio above typical substitution thresholds. Although aluminium prices rebounded in March amid Middle East disruptions, the ratio returned to around 3.7, while the absolute price gap remained high at over €9,150 (US$10,711) per tonne, maintaining substitution pressure.