This small French town has become the epicenter of fast charging this summer

Long trips by electric car are no longer a problem in France today. On highway service areas, 2.5 million charging sessions were recorded in July and August 2026, with activity nearly twice that of the first half of the year... A trend confirmed nationwide, with August setting a new record for public charging station usage.

Highly busy charging stations on the highways

Vacation trips are now a good indicator of the growth of electric vehicles. Guillaume Allio, co-founder of ChargeViz, compiled data on charging sessions at French highway rest areas this summer. The result: 2.5 million charges were recorded in July and August 2026 at 514 stations. Compared to the monthly average from January to June, activity surged by 94%.

The data shows that the five busiest days were Saturdays, which are typical vacation departure days, with August 1st being the busiest day of summer 2026. As shown in this chart, the highways with the highest number of charging sessions are A10, A7, A6, A9, and A31 in that order. The first three highways account for 26% of all summer charges combined.

Two stations stand out: Ionity Langres-Noidant and Ionity Langres-Perrogney, both located on either side of the A31 highway. These stations are situated across the borders of Noidant-le-Rocheux and Perrogney-les-Fontaines in Haute-Marne, just a few kilometers from Langres. Who would have thought that these two small villages would one day become the hub for fast charging in France?

It should be noted that highway infrastructure accounts for only a small portion of France’s charging network. By the end of August, the country had “only” 4,455 charging stations on highways, representing 2% of the total 200,926 available charging points.

A record across all of France

In fact, this increase is not limited to major highways. According to the latest Avere-France survey, public charging stations saw an average of 39.3 charging sessions in August 2026. This is the highest level recorded in the past twelve months, surpassing even July’s figures, and represents a significant increase from 31 sessions in August 2025: an increase of 27% over one year.

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The same trend is observed when looking at the total energy delivered in France. Each charging station provided an average of 855 kWh in August, up from 639 kWh a year earlier, representing a 34% increase. At the level of an entire station, the average monthly consumption now reaches 3,075 kWh for August 2026.

This growth has not yet led to network saturation. In August, the probability of immediately finding at least one charging station available was 94%. Queues may form during peak usage times, but it is clear that public charging is expanding at a rapid pace.

Moreover, returning to the ChargeViz data, for the stations in the Langres area, the peak usage reaches at most 27.8%, which means that even on the busiest day, the station is utilized only at a quarter of its capacity. There is room for improvement.