Romania has one of the highest tariffs for fast charging electric cars in Europe, namely EUR 0.43/kWh, at the same level as Austria and almost double compared to Spain or Croatia, although the wholesale price of energy is not the highest in the EU, according to an analysis signed by the president of the Smart Energy Association, Dumitru Chisăliță.
According to the cited source, the difference is explained by the lack of competition in the ultra-fast charging station segment and by the commercial strategy of operators who treat Romania as a transit market, with low volume and weak negotiating power.
The analysis showed that Romania’s wholesale price of electricity is below the EU average, but still, electric car users pay among the highest fast-charging tariffs.
“It is the result of a deliberate commercial strategy,” said Chisăliță, cited by Agerpres.
“In the absence of a constant flow of local users, investment and operating costs are recovered through a higher price per kWh. In other words, a few pay a lot, instead of many paying a little. This economic logic is easy to understand from the company’s perspective, but hard to accept for consumers. Especially when the comparison with other countries in the region is inevitable,” the document states.
The president of AEI emphasized that Romania does not yet have real competition in the area of ultra-fast charging stations, unlike markets like Hungary or Poland.
“The regional pricing policy practiced by Tesla treats Eastern Europe as an area where investments must be amortized quickly, because the risks are considered higher due to slow adoption of electric cars, legislative instability, and modest road infrastructure. All these are ‘embedded’ in the final price paid by the driver,” Chisăliță mentioned.
According to him, Romania entered directly into the monetization phase, without benefiting from the advantages of a mature market. Prices will only go down when competition is real, the analyst concluded.
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