A Global Market Moving at Different Speeds
Worldwide EV sales climbed more than 20 percent in 2025, with the growth distributed unevenly across major markets. Europe staged a notable comeback after a sluggish prior year, with sales rising by roughly a third to 3.7 million vehicles and pushing electric vehicles to nearly 30 percent of all new car sales across the continent. North America told a different story, with the market cooling amid political uncertainty and softer consumer sentiment.
China continued to set the pace for the industry as a whole. The country became the first major market to cross the 50 percent threshold for EV sales, and Roland Berger’s analysts point to Chinese manufacturers’ technological edge and cost advantages as forces now shaping EV strategy well beyond its own borders. Norway remains the outlier at the top of the country rankings, with battery electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles together accounting for nearly 89 percent of new sales, followed by the Netherlands and Sweden, both above the 55 percent mark.
Fast Charging Emerges as the Deciding Factor
Roughly 1.1 million new public charge points went into service worldwide in 2025, a modest pullback from the prior year’s total. Rather than signaling weakening investment, Roland Berger frames the dip as evidence of a maturing market, one where operators are shifting their attention from simply expanding the size of charging networks to improving the performance of the chargers already in the ground. That means a growing emphasis on fast and ultra-fast charging capable of delivering 150 kilowatts or more, driven by drivers who want shorter stops and by the improving commercial economics of high-power hardware.
“The next phase of electromobility will not be determined by vehicles alone, but by the availability of high-performance charging infrastructure,” said Adam Healy, a partner at Roland Berger. He added that Europe’s central task is ensuring that its EV growth is matched by charging infrastructure built for the expectations of the next generation of drivers.
On that measure, Europe still lags. Just over one in five public charge points across the continent qualifies as fast or ultra-fast, compared with nearly half of all public chargers in China. That gap illustrates how China’s advantage now extends beyond vehicle manufacturing and into the infrastructure that supports it.
A Widening Ratio Between Cars and Chargers
The report also points to an emerging imbalance between the pace of EV adoption and the pace of fast-charging buildout. After years in which charge point operators invested heavily to head off the infrastructure shortages that unsettled early EV buyers, the growth in battery electric vehicle numbers is now beginning to outrun the growth in fast chargers. In Western Europe, the current ratio stands at about 45 battery electric vehicles for every fast charge point, a level Roland Berger characterizes as still comfortable from a utilization standpoint, even as the firm expects that ratio to climb as the vehicle fleet expands and charging network economics continue to evolve.
Where the Rest of the World Stands
Beyond the leaders, the country-by-country data in the EV Charging Index shows a wide spread in EV penetration. Singapore and Vietnam round out the top tier of markets already above 33 percent EV share, while Belgium, Portugal and Switzerland cluster in the 30 to 38 percent range. The United States, by contrast, sits further down the list at 9.6 percent combined battery electric and plug-in hybrid share, trailing not only European markets but also Thailand, Qatar and Romania. Canada sits just behind the U.S. at 9.4 percent, while larger developing markets such as India, Brazil and Mexico remain in the low single digits, an indication of how much runway remains before electrification becomes a global default rather than a regional trend.
Taken together, the findings suggest that the conversation around EV adoption is entering a new phase. The question for automakers and charging network operators alike is no longer simply whether drivers will buy electric vehicles, but whether the infrastructure built to support them can keep pace with how quickly those drivers expect to get back on the road.