Electromobility concept

Aachen has been promoting electromobility for a long time and has been successful in doing so. While the national average is 22 electric cars per charging station, Aachen is in a much better position with 14 electric cars (including plug-in hybrids) per charging point. The "ALigN" funding and research project played a large part in this. A total of around 500 charging stations are now available to the public in Aachen and visible in the mobility dashboard.

The city of Aachen is also working on the electrification of other means of transportation. This can already be seen in the spectrum of the 1st electromobility concept for the Aachen city region from 2011.

Electromobility strategy paper (PDF)

Our mission statement for electromobility (Vision Mobility 2050)

Electromobility is being developed and used in Aachen!

Aachen is a European competence center for electromobility. The means of transportation in Aachen should operate completely without fossil fuels. The energy required will be produced in a climate-neutral way - as far as possible in the Aachen region itself.

Aachen: Model region for electromobility

Aachen is the German city with the lowest per capita energy consumption for mobility. The early and forward-looking switch to alternative drive systems has meant that mobility has remained affordable despite the immense rise in oil prices.

Electric vehicles are developed in Aachen

Aachen has taken on a pioneering role for alternative drive systems, starting with electromobility. The aim is to achieve the target set by the EU in 2011 of all cars in urban areas being locally emission-free by 2050 even earlier in Aachen.

Networked electromobility

With the boom in electric bicycles, which were still ridiculed in 2010, and the subsequent electrification of bus transport, Aachen was one of the first cities in Germany to succeed in networking all means of transport into an "electromobile mobility network".

Electromobility strategy

As part of the Mobility Strategy 2030, a new electromobility strategy for the city of Aachen was developed in 2023 and 2024 by the ISME office on behalf of the city of Aachen. It has concretized the statements of the Mobility 2050 vision for the electromobility section It formulates the central topics, core tasks and core projects in the field of electromobility until 2030. The electromobility strategy focuses on car traffic. Electrification in the areas of bus, freight and bicycle transportation is reserved for the respective concepts.

The strategy was coordinated with the expert commission on electromobility (experts from administration, politics and associations) and the steering group in the VEP. It was adopted by the City of Aachen's Mobility Committee on January 16, 2025.

ALigN research project

The ALigN research project has made a major contribution to the expansion of the charging infrastructure in Aachen and has been successfully completed.

The ALigN project (expansion of charging infrastructure through targeted grid support) started in September 2018 and ran until the end of 2023. There were two main objectives for the project: The charging infrastructure was to be expanded and the effects of this expansion on the electricity grid infrastructure were to be researched.

A total of 670 new charging points were installed and put into operation as a result of the project. 379 of these charging stations are publicly accessible. The remaining stations were installed directly at companies.

ALigN was implemented jointly by the City of Aachen, STAWAG, Regionetz, RWTH Aachen University and the companies Smartlab, Umlaut (Accenture) and aixACCT. At the end of the project, Lord Mayor Sibylle Keupen said: "I am delighted for the people who cannot charge at home or at work that we in the city of Aachen have taken a big step forward in expanding the charging infrastructure with climate-neutral electricity."

Former ALigN project manager Marc Heusch is also very satisfied with the current charging infrastructure in Aachen. "Nevertheless, we still need to improve our coverage of the entire area in line with demand. Even if the growth in charging infrastructure is very satisfactory, the challenges for the next few years remain very great due to the expected increase in the number of electric vehicle registrations."

Demand and procedure for further charging infrastructure in Aachen

Anyone who drives an electric car is always dependent on charging stations. In the coming years, the city of Aachen would like to provide its citizens with public charging points in line with demand. This will only be done indirectly, as public charging infrastructure is not provided by the city of Aachen itself.

In its electromobility strategy, the city of Aachen is guided by the German government's target of a 30% share of electric vehicles in Germany by 2023. Applied to Aachen, this means a need for around 1,800 additional charging points by 2030. A funding program for the installation of charging infrastructure is currently being prepared to ensure a fair expansion of charging infrastructure throughout the city for the benefit of all citizens who do not have their own charging facilities at home.

STAWAG also accepts specific requests for charging stations on its website.

For interested parties wishing to set up and operate charging infrastructure, guidelines have been issued for the installation of charging infrastructure in the city of Aachen, in which all specifications and processes for the application, installation and operation of charging stations have been defined. The corresponding spaces in public areas are allocated in the order in which they are received by the "Road Traffic and Special Uses" department, i.e. on a first-come, first-served basis. You can access the guidelines here .

Weitergehende Fragen können gerne an die folgende E-Mail-Adresse gerichtet werden: elektromobilitaet@mail.aachen.de

Hydrogen vehicles for waste collection

In the #AachenMooVe!5 funding project (2019 - 2022), two hydrogen-powered waste collection vehicles and a battery-powered electric sweeper were procured and deployed by Aachen's municipal services. The aim of the measure was to set an example for the use of alternatively powered special vehicles - and thus to move away from fossil fuels in this area. Further information on electric vehicles can be obtained from Aachener Stadtbetrieb.

Further topics