Charging

Honda R&D, with Taisei Corporation and Taisei Rotec, announced an in-motion wireless charging road on 5 October 2026 delivering up to 150 kW. It claims the world's first ground unit integrating inverter and coil, linked by DC distribution and designed to retrofit into milled existing pavement rated for 20-tonne trucks. Public-road demonstrations start in Japan's 2027 fiscal year.

Vattenfall InCharge says the energy drawn from its German public network is up about 65% since January, and that its fast chargers passed 10 GWh by the end of August, roughly 47% more than the whole of 2025. The company used the figures to argue against a German fuel rebate. What it did not publish is how many charge points it now runs, which is what separates busier chargers from more chargers.

E.Leclerc cuts AC charging to €0.17/kWh from Monday 5 October 2026, one cent below Lidl, at 22 kW points in 330 French stores via the Charge E-Lec app with no subscription. The rate excludes rapid charging and covers a minority of Leclerc's 3,000-plus charge points, and a European Model 3 or Model Y can draw only 11 kW from a 22 kW post.

Polestar launched two Polestar Charge subscriptions on 2 October 2026: Plus at EUR 7.99 a month for 15 per cent off fast charging at EnBW, Shell Recharge, Vattenfall, Mer and Fastned, and Pro at EUR 14.99 for 30 per cent plus Ionity and Allego. The discounts cover 104,000 and 118,000 points in Europe, out of a 1.25 million-point roaming network that includes Tesla Superchargers at no discount on any tier.

Siemens and OMV commissioned the first SICHARGE FLEX system on 29 September 2026 at an OMV station in Kufstein, Austria, on the Brenner corridor. Six DC points are live — four for cars, two for trucks, each up to 400 kW — with four Megawatt Charging System points at 600 to 1,200 kW to follow in a later, undated phase.

From 15 October 2026 GreenWay charges according to the country you are charging in, not the country your account is registered in. Slovak-registered accounts lose a roughly 14% advantage at Polish ultra-fast chargers, where they had been paying 2.58 PLN/kWh against a local 2.99 PLN/kWh.

connect and umlaut published their eighth annual charging test on 1 October 2026, covering 17 providers across Germany, Austria and Switzerland over about 6,700 km. Tesla's roughly 3,500 German charge points were not rated, because older Superchargers still require the Tesla app for other brands. On tariffs, the gap between the best and worst contract reaches EUR 809 a year.

Tesla has launched Emergency Drive Away in firmware 2026.38.3, letting drivers pull out of a Supercharger bay with the cable still attached. It works by accepting damage to the car and the charger rather than by speeding up a safe disconnect, it uploads camera footage to Tesla, and it is US-only for now.

Tesla's Q3 2026 charging update reports 69 million Supercharger sessions and 2.4 TWh delivered, both up 29% year on year, with about 2,700 new stalls and 28.9 TWh delivered all-time. The 7.0 GWh it broke out for the Robotaxi fleet is 0.29% of the quarter - but Tesla's own comparison to 146,000 Cybercab charges implies a pack of roughly 48 kWh.

Ladesonne's charging park at the Autohof Schwarmstedt on the A7 prices electricity at 29 ct/kWh whenever an adjacent 4.6 MWp solar park is supplying it, and follows the spot market when it is not. That is about half Germany's 59-cent median for public DC charging.

From 1 October 2026, Energie 360° Mobilität, Gofast, Swisscharge and Move Mobility merge into Joya Mobility AG — 7,500 public charging points including more than 1,800 fast chargers, making it Switzerland's biggest CPO from day one. Plug & Charge is promised by 2027 and cross-border roaming has no date.

Two Tesla patents published on 1 October 2026, filed in March, cover foreign-object detection on an inductive charging pad — one using embedded temperature sensors, the other reading resonant-frequency shifts to tell a dropped coin apart from a warm day. The target is the Cybercab, not customer cars.

On 29 September 2026 EVgo previewed a next-generation charging system capable of up to 750 kW, designed at its El Segundo Innovation Lab with Delta Electronics and due to be revealed and deployed in 2027. Every stall carries a NACS connector and power is shared across stalls. The announcement comes two months after EVgo agreed to deploy Tesla's 500 kW V4 Superchargers under its own brand.

A driver left his EV plugged in for two days at Graz Airport and was billed more than 2,000 euros for one session. The airport's operators, Moon and Apcoa, charge 0.48 and 0.69 euros per kWh, with Apcoa's blocking fee free for the first 48 hours and capped at 17.28 euros a day after that. The bill came from the driver's roaming card provider, which bills by connection time rather than energy delivered. A goodwill settlement is being discussed.

Cables were severed at 28 EV charging bays across Ballarat, Victoria on the night of Saturday 26 September 2026 — 26 of them Tesla Supercharger bays at Lucas and Wendouree, plus two at an Exploren charger. It is Australia's largest recorded attack on charging infrastructure. Copper theft is assumed, but Tesla's liquid-cooled DC cables contain little copper, and no motive has been confirmed.

Germany's federally commissioned Deutschlandnetz has opened the 100th of 200 planned charging parks on unstaffed autobahn rest areas, at PWC Räthisgraben on the A81 towards Stuttgart. E.ON Drive Infrastructure runs it with three Alpitronic HYC400 units giving six points at up to 400 kW. The programme was meant to finish by the end of 2026; completion now runs into 2027 and, for a small number of sites, 2028.

On 27 September 2026 NIO agreed to sell a Geely Holding subsidiary 30% of NIO Power, its battery swap and charging unit, at a post-money valuation of about RMB 16 billion. Geely pays mostly in kind, contributing swap operator Yiyi Internet Technology plus RMB 640 million in cash, and the two will jointly develop unified swap standards with Geely building swappable models. NIO has separately said it will not add battery swap stations in Europe.

CharIN held its Testival & Conference Europe in Blomberg from 22 to 25 September 2026, testing how reliably vehicles and chargers actually communicate. CTO Michael Keller calls it "speed dating between the vehicle and the charging hardware" and says the MCS plug still needs work on compatibility and locking. Bidirectional energy flow was supported by only 13 of 23 DC and 7 of 11 AC systems at CharIN's May Testival, and V2G against European grid rules remains early-stage. Megawatt charging hardware exists - the eActros 600 takes up to 1,000 kW - but not in volume.

Eni Plenitude's promotional Italian rates of 0.53 to 0.65 euro per kWh expire on 30 September 2026. From 1 October it sells three subscriptions instead — Smart Road at 45 euro for 100 kWh, Fast Road at 83 euro for 150 kWh and Open Road at 150 euro for 200 kWh — while Enel runs a parallel ladder from 4 euro a month. The mid tier only beats pay-per-use above roughly 95 kWh a month.

French utility Sorégies is buying bp pulse's French fast-charging business: 32 sites with more than 600 charge points above 100 kW, plus 14 sites in development. The parks rebrand to Alterna énergie, the deal closes by end-2026, and BP keeps only Aral pulse in Germany.

Geely launched a fifth-generation Smart Charging Station rated at 2,250 kW in Ningbo on 23 September 2026, alongside its 12C Shendun Golden Battery. A Lynk & Co 10 charged 10-70% in 4 minutes 30 seconds, but peaked at 1,093 kW - under half the station's rating, and about what the same car already drew on Geely's 1,500 kW hardware.

Charge France says 21 of its members filed 427 complaints over stolen charging cables in the first seven months of 2026, for close to €9 million of damage. Copper near €9,000 a tonne is driving it, thieves net a few dozen euros a cable, operators pay thousands per charge point, and only one landmark conviction has followed.

CAA drove 22 electric cars over the same 230 km route in Ontario on 16 September 2026. The Model Y placed second at 11.81 kWh/100 km and the Model 3 third at 11.85, behind the Toyota bZ, and both recorded the lowest public charging costs. But every car in the test charged at a Tesla Supercharger, and the Model Y added only 97 km in 15 minutes against a 110 km field average.

XPeng and Halo Energy opened a four-bay X-Energy site in Hong Kong on 22 September 2026 with one 1,000 kW liquid-cooled charger, backed by a 400 kWh battery that lets it hit 1,040 kW peak from a 120–240 kW grid connection. Single-gun output is up to 250 kW depending on the car, and XPeng's fastest models peak at 619.6 kW. He Xiaopeng says more than 1,000 XPeng stations are planned across 13 European countries, without a timeline.