Best City in Europe to Hire an Electric Car

After a holiday-less 18 months, many of us have saved up a sizeable holiday fund - we’re ready for a big blowout trip sometime soon.

But where to go first after this travelling drought? For the EV drivers amongst you, knowing you can easily get around in the same green fashion you do at home is a major pull.

At Lease Fetcher, we’ve explored how easy it is to keep an electric car powered up across different European cities. You can see the best destinations below!

Ah, the city of lurve! If you love electric cars, then Paris is your best bet for keeping your hired electric car juiced up.

Paris has a total of 21.7 charging locations per km2. This is a pretty impressive figure in comparison to other major cities. Only Amsterdam came close with 20.5 locations per km2.

These EV-friendly cities are miles ahead of the next best locations: London (3.8 per km2), Munich (3.3 per km2), and Manchester (3 per km2).

Paris operates a low emission zone - their phased roadmap shows that they hope to ban all diesel cars from the zone from 2024, with controls becoming stricter in the next few years. Ensuring that enough charging stations are available for more desirable EVs is a must to meet their targets.

Overall, France has set an ambitious goal to have over 100,000 public charging points by the end of 2021 and to produce 1 million electric vehicles every year by 2025. They offer a generous electric car grant of 7,000 Euros, exemption from registration and company car tax, and various groups can claim up to 50% of the cost of installing charging stations. (Stats from Wallbox). 

These are only a few main incentives - France is making a concerted effort to popularise electric transport, so no wonder Paris has come out on top in this study. Plus the country is the birthplace of the Renault Zoe, the perfect electric city car to hire for exploring the beautiful city!

If we take an alternative approach and look at the overall number of charging locations, London actually pulls right ahead. It is home to 5,900 charging locations.

Amsterdam takes second spot with 3,404 charging locations. Paris is in third place with 2,282, Berlin in fourth with 1,526, and Hamburg fifth with 1,485.

When looking at these figures, it’s important to bear in mind that these cities vary in size, both geographically and population-wise.

That said, the UK is making great strides to electrify the roads. Ultra Low Emissions Zones (ULEZ) are springing up all across the nation - in these zones, you have to pay a charge to enter if your vehicle produces a certain emissions level. London is home to one of these ULEZ, so it makes sense that there be enough chargers to match the call for zero emission EVs.

The UK Government has many additional measures to reduce road emissions, like a £2,500 plug-in car grant, exemption from road tax, and the lowest recorded BIK rates so far.

Whilst looking at the number of charging stations alone does not paint the whole picture, looking at the stations per capita helps put it into perspective.

So, per capita, Amsterdam has the most charging stations, with 217.9 people per station.

Oslo follows with 597.9 people per station, Paris with 937.1, Manchester with 1,149.8, and Hamburg with 1,171.1.

The Netherlands is known for its cyclist-friendly cities and cities like Amsterdam have solid public transport networks which keep polluting ICE cars off of the roads. In fact, the Netherlands as a whole has the highest number of EVs and chargers per 100km in the world, though Amsterdam specifically hasn’t quite matched Paris.

Additionally, Amsterdam has a low emission zone so installing electric car chargers around the city is a must to keep the operation running smoothly.

If you’re an EV driver who is planning a trip abroad in the coming months and you’re keen to venture around the city by car, Paris should be a top contender. 

With the highest density of electric car locations per km2, you won’t need to go far to find a place to top up your charge, which is a fantastic feature if you’re in a city you don’t normally drive and therefore don’t just know where the nearest points are located.

Amsterdam and London are also great options. All three have low emission zones, so it has been vital that the local Government install enough chargers to help make their green goals possible.

Using data from Here Technologies, we gathered the number of electric charging locations across all major cities in Europe. 

We also sourced the Km2 land area of the cities through Wikipedia's City pages (See example, ​​Oslo), as well as the population numbers for comparison through Work Population Review.

We combined the data to reveal the cities in Europe best for hiring an electric car.

Please contact [email protected] for original data and access to the media pack.