Hardware

I hadn’t thought of that, but that makes sense. As an American who wound up in a rental for over a month, charging at home (even at slow level 1 speeds) made fantastic sense economically. Charging in public at level 2 was still less expensive than gasoline, but not by nearly as much and lost the convenience of charging at home, especially considering that it still needed around 8 hours for a full charge. DC fast charging cost more than gasoline and was still less convenient because there weren’t many options and they weren’t close, every time I tried only 1 charger was working out of the multiple available devices, and it was still slower than filling a gas tank on a car. That made it clear that the financial benefits really only worked in a home, not an apartment. Given how many Europeans live in apartments in an urban environment it really shouldn’t be surprising that adoption is relatively low.

Here in Germany, it's mostly company fleet cars or "Dienstwagen" (special tax saving system). None of those will ever be plugged in. It's just cheaper for the company.