After the end of purchase subsidies, the electric car market was expected to slow down. The opposite happened. Operators are expanding charging networks, new hubs are emerging, and forecasts predict a jump in charging sessions to 200 million by the end of the decade.
Poland’s public charging network now includes over 12,500 points in about 5,500 locations. Fast DC chargers and large hubs along major routes are becoming more common. “We increasingly look at the quality of charging points rather than just their number. We are interested in the growth of charging hubs and higher power outputs – 150, 200 or 350 kW per point,” says Maciej Mazur, president of the Polish Alternative Fuels Association (PSNM).
Years ago, the first public charger in Poland delivered only 16 kW. Today manufacturers talk about charging beyond 1 MW. The technology shift is massive, and stations must keep up. Mazur warns against betting on a single solution: “This market is very capacious. The future system will combine several models – overnight charging in cities for apartment dwellers and ultra-fast charging along highways.”
Hubs replace slow chargers
The paradox of the Polish market is that infrastructure has grown faster than the EV fleet. Public chargers are used only 3-4% of the time, far below the level needed for healthy returns. Yet at popular locations queues are forming. “Infrastructure historically developed faster than the vehicle market and we are still waiting for the wave of cars that will charge,” says Mazur.
That is why hubs are gaining importance. From an operator’s perspective they are far more efficient than individual AC points. Cars stop for a dozen minutes, not hours, boosting rotation and utilisation. According to Mazur, 2025 was the symbolic start of the hub era in Poland. “From the operator’s perspective, infrastructure in a hub should work almost continuously – one car leaves, another pulls in. That is where it is easiest to build the utilisation level that allows you to earn on the investment.”
The grid as the main barrier
The biggest obstacle to further expansion is no longer demand but access to electricity. This is especially true for locations near motorways and expressways, where operators often have to bring power connections over hundreds of metres or even several kilometres. “This is not a future problem, it is the present. We have locations along the TEN-T network where we need to run a cable for several hundred metres, sometimes a dozen kilometres. That is one of the biggest challenges today,” says Mazur.
Without solving this, electrification of transport – especially heavy trucks requiring several or a dozen megawatts per site – will be difficult. The average price of a new EV in Poland is now around PLN 210,000, while the average for all new cars is about PLN 190,000. The gap is narrowing, and mass-market models are appearing. Mazur also highlights the planned EV production in Jaworzno as an important signal that electromobility is becoming an economic project for Poland.
The most striking forecast concerns infrastructure use. PSNM estimates that by the end of 2026 the number of charging sessions on public stations will reach nearly 18 million. “We were ourselves surprised by the scale of this growth. From almost 18 million sessions we will go to over 200 million in the coming years,” says Mazur. That means about 180 million additional charges in the next four years. “The data on car sales, charging sessions and new investments shows that electromobility in Poland still has a huge growth potential.”
Źródło: WNP.PL, Fot. Shutterstock
