The Automotive Update: Residual value results and public EV chargers
04 June 2026
How did residual values (RVs) perform across major European markets in May? How did this influence outlooks? Plus, where are public electric vehicle (EV) charging stations getting a boost? Autovista24 editor Tom Geggus talks through the data in the latest episode of the Automotive Update podcast.
Autovista24 journalist Tom Hooker appears in this week’s podcast episode to discuss value retention trends from seven European used-car markets. Drawing on expert insights, he outlines what to expect in the years ahead.
Then, an exploration of EV Volumes’ latest data on public EV charging infrastructure covering 75 different markets. The duo then considers how the pace of growth was directed by different countries.
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Automotive residual values
May’s Monthly Market Update reveals value declines as a percentage of retained list price (%RV) after 36 months and 60,000km. Meanwhile, new-car list prices rose year-on-year. This trend was recorded in the used-car markets of Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland and the UK.
Compared with May 2025, %RVs saw the greatest drop in Italy, where values fell by 3.7 percentage points (pp) to 44.4%. Meanwhile, the smallest decline was recorded in Austria, with a 0.7pp fall to 46.6%. Regional experts also forecast one of the smallest year-on-year drops by the end of 2026.
In contrast, the outlook for Italy foresees the steepest %RV descent of the seven recorded markets. But it is the only location where values are expected to increase once more by 2028. Most other markets expect to see marginal declines by that point.
Electric automotive infrastructure
Public EV charging infrastructure continued to record year-on-year growth in May, according to the latest data from EV Volumes. This details the number of locations a particular connector type can be found. This more accurately reflects the variety of chargers the public has access to.
While there was a year-on-year jump of 25.2% in the number of plug-in points, this confirmed a consistent slowdown. The pace at which new infrastructure has been installed has eased from 81.8% in May 2023.
Representing 83.1% of all charging locations recorded by EV Volumes, China has been a major driver of this result. Following a 110% year-on-year plug-in point expansion in May 2023, this rate decreased consistently to 28% in May 2026.
To put the country’s share into perspective, the next biggest infrastructure location was the Netherlands with a 2.7% share. Other leading locations from Europe included Germany, the UK and France.
More broadly, 524,923 stations were tallied by EV Volumes in Europe, up 15.7% year on year. Meanwhile, the US accounted for 1.8% of recorded plug-in points, with 88,050 locations. This equated to a growth of 7.7% compared with the previous May.
