Munich. The Munich I Regional Court made a ruling on Tuesday that is likely to have a signal effect on pricing at public charging stations for electric cars.
According to this, the charging station operator EWE Go may not charge higher prices per kilowatt hour from the charging card operator Digital Charging Solutions (DCS) than from customers of the EWE Go app, the court ruled on Tuesday. The court also declared an additional so-called blocking fee for DCS customers to be inadmissible.
DCS is owned by one third each of the BMW, Mercedes and BP companies and also operates the charging cards of other car manufacturers. Based on the judgment, the company could now retroactively claim damages from EWE Go.
The court found that the operator must generally pay for damages from the period since April 13, 2024. How much money DCS actually receives would have to be clarified in further proceedings.
But the process is about more than just compensation. The core question is: Why are the price differences for the same electricity at the same charging station so large?
“The price differences when charging at the same charging station are sometimes drastic and incomprehensible for consumers,” said DCS boss Jörg Reimann. “Anyone who pays significantly more for purchases than the operator charges their own customers cannot make a competitive offer at this charging point.”
EWE Go charged customers 52 cents per kilowatt hour for fast charging via its own app during the period at issue in court. The ad hoc price at the time, i.e. charging without prior registration or contract, was 79 cents. DCS, on the other hand, had to pay 83.7 cents per kilowatt hour for particularly fast charging.
It is precisely such price structures that currently make charging electric cars at public charging points in Germany so confusing. There is a juxtaposition of ad hoc prices, operator apps, subscriptions and charging cards.
"In order to charge cheaply, electric car drivers often need three, four, five charging cards at the same time, depending on where they want to charge. That's crazy," says Jonas Sulzer, who systematically monitors charging offers with his start-up Charging Time.
Actually, charging cards are supposed to solve exactly this problem. Providers like DCS bundle access to many charging networks. A card, an app and central billing should make charging as easy as refueling. This is attractive for companies and private individuals because the charging processes can be billed centrally.
However, the model only works if the charging card provider can purchase the electricity at conditions that allow it to remain competitive. That's exactly what the dispute with EWE Go was about.
DCS argued that the charging station operator offered its own customers significantly cheaper prices via the app, but was unjustifiably demanding higher conditions from DCS. There was also a blocking fee that was charged after 45 minutes for DCS customers, but not for EWE Go's own customers.
The court found DCS right on all three points. It viewed both the higher price for the DCS customers at the time, who charged spontaneously, and the higher price for EWE Go's contract customers as inadmissible.
In the first case, the DCS price was 3.7 cents per kilowatt hour higher than the ad hoc price at the time. In the second case, the difference to the EWE-Go contract tariff was 31.7 cents - DCS paid around 60 percent more.
The court said that although price differences are generally permissible, they must be able to be explained objectively and should not be disproportionate. However, according to the judges, EWE Go could not adequately explain why the surcharges were so high in this case.
EWE Go had argued, among other things, different risks, the value of customer data and the stronger loyalty of its own customers. The judges left it open whether such factors could fundamentally explain a price difference. However, EWE Go did not clearly explain why they should justify a surcharge of 31.7 cents per kilowatt hour.
The court also found the blocking fee to be unjustified in this form. EWE Go charged DCS customers 11.9 cents gross per minute at particularly fast charging points after just 45 minutes, while its own customers did not have to pay a corresponding fee.
The decision is particularly relevant for the industry because the court interprets the EU requirements broadly. These prohibit discriminatory price differences. According to the judges, this also applies if an operator also acts as a charging card provider and sells its own contract tariff. Otherwise, operators could easily circumvent the rule by splitting their offers.
This means that nothing less than the current pricing logic of the market is up for debate. Operators had previously offered their own app customers cheap tariffs and at the same time used the high ad hoc price as a benchmark for external charging cards. This made it difficult for mobility service providers to make a competitive offer.
The result so far: Anyone who wanted to spontaneously load with a card often paid the highest price. Anyone who used the operator's app got off cheaper. Anyone traveling with a company or charging card received easy access and central billing, but may have to pay more for it.
However, it remains to be seen whether the prices will change immediately. The judgment is not yet legally binding. EWE announced that it would examine the reasons for the judgment and then decide on how to proceed. Furthermore, the company does not want to comment on the proceedings at this time.
The court also did not order that all prices now fall to a uniform level. EWE Go could lower conditions for external charging cards. However, operators could also increase their cheap contract tariffs in order to reduce the gap to the prices for mobility service providers. Which variant prevails depends on how the industry views the ruling and whether other charging card providers make similar claims.
