EV charging
Verdict
At fast chargers built since April 2024, yes. At older and slower posts, often not.
Under the EU's alternative fuels regulation, every public charging point of at least 50 kW put in from 13 April 2024 must take a bank card or contactless payment, with no contract and no subscription. Points of that size already standing on the TEN-T core network have until 1 January 2027. A 22 kW post put in a town square in 2019 is below the threshold and older than the rule: expect an app, a QR code or an RFID card.
The rental desk will explain the fuel policy at length and say nothing about charging. You find out how it works at the first charger, usually in the rain. Every number here comes from the operators' own tariff pages or the regulation itself.
Two connectors cover almost every hire car in Europe. AC charging (hotel car parks, kerbside posts, supermarket bays) runs on Type 2. DC fast charging runs on CCS, a Type 2 head with two fat pins bolted underneath. Anything you can rent this year takes both.
CHAdeMO is the survivor: a fat round Japanese plug, and the reason you would care is an older Nissan Leaf. Fastned still carries it; its station pages print the connectors one by one, and Schmidgaden in Bavaria lists CCS and CHAdeMO at up to 300 kW. Tesla does not: its support page describes V2 posts as dual-cable for DC Type 2 and CCS Combo 2, V3 as single-cable CCS, V4 the same with a longer lead. With a CHAdeMO port, plan the stops on the operator's map before you leave the hotel.
Kerbside AC posts across northern Europe are sockets, not cables. No cable on the post plus none in the car is a long evening.
Before you sign for the car, open the boot and check there is a Type 2 cable in it.
The regulation also says the ad hoc price per kWh has to be displayed at the charging point. The operators set out the rest on their own pages.
Those holds add up. Three stops in a day is up to €180 of pre-authorisations sitting on the card while the refunds crawl back. I put charging on a credit card and keep the debit card for tolls.
| Network | Ad hoc price per kWh, as published | Bank card at the charger? |
|---|---|---|
| Ionity | Direct: FR €0.55, ES €0.66, AT €0.69, DE €0.72, BE €0.75, NL €0.76, IT €0.85 | Selected stations only (NFC) |
| Fastned | ES €0.59, FR €0.61, DE €0.69, NL and BE €0.77, IT €0.83 | Yes, €40 reservation |
| Tesla Supercharger | Nothing published. Price moves with site occupancy, shown in the app, locked when the session starts | App only; open to other brands |
| Allego | Ultra-fast: NL €0.59, DE €0.73, FR €0.75, AT €0.79, IT €0.81 | Yes, €40 hold |
| TotalEnergies | €0.52 up to 50 kW, €0.62 above, at its service stations, from 5 March 2025; street sites mix €/kWh and €/minute by concession | Not stated on its own pages |
| Free To X | AC €0.50, DC €0.65, HPC €0.79, VAT included | Yes, terminal on charger 01, €60 hold |
| Iberdrola | Nothing published; the price is the one shown in the app | Yes, debit or credit card |
| Shell Recharge | Nothing per kWh; price is in the app, and the UK page adds a £0.35 session fee capped at £7 a month | Direct payment by QR at many points |
Three of the eight publish no standing price. The number on the screen is the only one that counts.
Every price above is per kWh, the assumption most of Europe now runs on. Austria is where it breaks.
Wien Energie, which runs essentially all of Vienna's public charging, billed every session by charging time until 2 October 2023, and still sells a time-based tariff:
| Charging point | Per minute | Per hour |
|---|---|---|
| Up to 11 kW | €0.084 day, €0.069 night | €5.04 / €4.14 |
| 12–50 kW | €0.420 | €25.20 |
| 51–400 kW | €1.690 | €101.40 |
The band is set by the post, not by your car: Wien Energie's sheet says the figures are the point's maximum output, independent of what the vehicle draws. A 22 kW AC post, the ordinary kind in a hotel garage, is therefore in the middle band. Leave the car on one overnight on the time tariff and twelve hours is €302, most of it billed after the battery was already full.
Per kWh, an overnight charge costs what the energy costs. Per minute, it costs what the night costs.
A Chargemap Pass costs €19.90 including packaging and delivery, is valid two years, and replacements are €7. What it is not is a discount: Chargemap's own support page says the fixed charges were removed and its margin now sits inside the charge rates. Their published Ionity rate in France, without the add-on subscription, was €0.594/kWh on 1 March 2025, against Ionity's own Direct price of €0.55 now. You pay a little for not installing nine apps.
Octopus Electroverse sends the card free and states it charges no subscription or transaction fees, passing through the operators' rates. For a visitor, that is the one I order first.
Subscriptions beat roaming cards if you will use them. Ionity Motion is €5.99 a month, Power €11.99, no minimum term, one month's notice, and Power in France is €0.33/kWh against €0.55 Direct, so it pays for itself at 55 kWh, one big fill. Fastned Gold is €5.99 a month: €0.43 in France against €0.61, €0.49 in Germany against €0.69, €0.54 in the Netherlands against €0.77. In France that is 33 kWh to break even. I buy Gold the day I collect the car and cancel it when I get home.
Tesla's congestion fee applies in the euro countries, and its page states there is no limit on what accrues: twenty minutes over lunch is €10. Allego's overstay fee covers thirteen countries. For Ionity and Fastned that is not a promise one will never exist, but at the time of writing there is none on their pages.
Run the numbers on a 60 kWh fill. Ionity Direct in Italy, at €0.85, is €51. Allego's ordinary Dutch AC post, at €0.39, is €23.40. Free To X sells the same electricity on the same Italian motorway at €0.79 on a high-power charger or €0.50 on AC, €17.40 apart on one fill, for the price of eating lunch where you stopped anyway.
So my order is unromantic: charge slowly wherever the car sits overnight, and treat the motorway as a top-up to reach the next one. One rule on hotels: if the hotel's own site does not state what its charger costs, ask when you book, and ask in what unit. "EV charging" on a booking site means a socket exists, not that it is free, working, or billed by the kWh.
ParkingInEurope's city pages carry the local version. Vienna is the clearest: Wien Energie's ad hoc rate is €0.56/kWh, you need no Parkschein while the car is charging, and its FAQ says to leave within 15 minutes of the "charging finished" push notification, after which the City of Vienna writes a parking ticket. Amsterdam reserves its kerbside bays for cars that are actually charging, and in a city with more than 10,000 connectors that is enforced. Monaco is the outlier: Monaco ON has nearly 300 points across 17 public car parks, and it has been free to use since it opened.
Paris draws the line differently. The city states that charging spaces are not classed as parking, so you pay for the electricity and no parking fee. A kindness, and also why a Parisian bay is never empty.
Where to leave the car, from our sister site. Each card is the short version; the full guide has every car park, the tow pound and the charging points.
ParkingInEurope
Twenty-three districts, one short-stay zone, two hours maximum.
Full parking guide for Vienna Checked 22 September 2026
ParkingInEurope
Up to €8 an hour on the street, €6 a day if you know the P+R rules.
Full parking guide for Amsterdam Checked 16 September 2026
ParkingInEurope
The richest car park in the world gives you the first hour free. And the electricity.
Full parking guide for Monaco Checked 16 September 2026
ParkingInEurope
A city that charges by the hour, by the zone and by the kilo. Come on a Sunday.
Full parking guide for Paris Checked 16 September 2026
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