The European Commission plans to focus two of its flagship funding instruments — the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) and the Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Facility (AFIF) — on charging infrastructure for electric trucks and buses in future funding rounds.

The policy shift addresses a structural problem in the market: building high-power charging for heavy-duty vehicles carries high investment risk, and banks remain cautious about financing it. At the same time, charging demand along key freight routes is growing rapidly.

That combination — high capital costs, uncertain near-term utilisation and reluctant lenders — has left a gap between what hauliers need to electrify fleets and what charge point operators can finance on commercial terms. EU funding is intended to close that gap by de-risking early deployments along the busiest corridors.

For truck manufacturers and fleet operators, the direction of travel matters. Scania, Daimler Truck, Volvo and their peers have bet on battery-electric heavy-duty vehicles as the core of their decarbonisation programmes, but uptake depends on reliable high-power charging along the trans-European transport network. Targeting CEF and AFIF money at trucks and buses signals that Brussels sees heavy-duty charging, rather than passenger-car infrastructure, as the current bottleneck.

What to watch: the next AFIF call for proposals will show how much money the Commission allocates to heavy-duty charging and what co-funding rates it accepts. Also watch whether member states adjust their own national frameworks — and whether the de-risked economics pull cautious lenders back into project financing.