Public charging just got a lot less annoying for BMW and MINI EV drivers in Germany. Since March 16th, both brands have enabled contract-free Plug & Charge at public DC fast chargers — meaning you can pull up, plug in, and the car handles the rest automatically. The setup works through the credit card already on file with your BMW or MINI account. Once you log into the vehicle with your customer ID, it authenticates itself at the charger automatically when the cable connects. Billing runs directly to that card, and the applicable ad hoc price — the same one anyone without a contract would pay — is displayed in the car and the app for supported stations.
What makes this genuinely useful is who it opens up Plug & Charge to. Until now, the feature was mainly relevant to drivers who already had a dedicated charging contract. This new approach works for anyone logged in with a BMW or MINI account: tourists, company car drivers, fleet vehicles where multiple people rotate in and out.
The rollout starts with Mer Germany and covers more than 1,400 charging points across Germany and Austria, running on Hubject’s Plug&Charge infrastructure. More operators and additional countries are on the way through the rest of 2026.
Plug & Charge has been a long time coming. For EV plug and charge to work, the EV manufacturer, the charging station, and EV charging network must all have ISO-capable hardware and software in place Chargie — which is why widespread rollout has taken years despite the standard existing since 2014. Getting those three parties aligned across hundreds of operators and dozens of car brands is genuinely hard.
In the U.S., the Plug & Charge is available on all BMW electric vehicles and through a Shell Recharge account, the user can charge at various station networks, even Tesla, by simply plugging in.
