EV chargers for underground car parks and apartment buildingsFor every parking space.

If you live in an apartment building, you want to charge your electric car at your own parking space. This is technically solvable, but more demanding than in a single-family home. Many cars hang on the same house connection, the cables in the underground car park are often old, and each household wants to pay only for its own electricity.

We plan EV charging infrastructure for underground car parks, outdoor parking and apartment buildings. From the supply line to the billing, with our own installers. For individual wallboxes in a single-family home, read EV charger and wallbox.

What does EV charging infrastructure in an underground car park include?

A good solution has four building blocks:

• Basic installation: Supply line from the distribution board, cable routes, fusing and space for all parking spaces.
• EV chargers: Wallboxes at the parking spaces that are to charge.
• Load management: Controls that share the available power among the cars that are charging.
• Metering and billing: Each user pays for their own electricity.

Load management: why it is needed

A house connection has only limited capacity. If ten cars charged at 11 kW at the same time, that would be 110 kW. The connection would be overloaded, or the fuse would blow. Load management prevents that.

It measures how much power the building is using at the moment and allocates the rest to the EV chargers. In the evening, when the kitchen and heating need a lot of electricity, the cars charge more slowly. At night, when the building needs little, they charge faster. By morning the cars are full, without the connection having to be reinforced.

This often saves high costs. Reinforcing the house connection is expensive and involves the grid operator. With good load management, many buildings manage without it. We calculate whether this applies to you at the site visit, using your load data.

Load management can also be linked to a solar system. The cars then charge preferably with electricity from your own roof. In a self-consumption community (ZEV) this works together with the apartments.

Preparing all parking spaces

Often only two or three households want to charge at first. A few years later it is more. If you plan anew each time, you pay several times over for groundwork, cable routes and distribution boards.

So we recommend the basic installation for all parking spaces right at the start:

• Cable trays and supply line are already in place.
• The distribution board is sized for all spaces.
• Wallboxes are added as needed, without new groundwork.
• The costs are shared fairly among everyone who joins later.

This is the calmest solution for property management and owners. As a guide, the basic installation per parking space usually costs clearly less than a single installation added later. The exact figures depend on the building and cable routes and are set out in the quote.

Retrofitting an existing underground car park

Most underground car parks were built before electric cars were a topic. When retrofitting, we meet typical obstacles: narrow cable shafts, full distribution boards, fire compartments and ceilings with little room for cable trays.

This can be solved. Before planning, we check:

• Distribution board and house connection: How much reserve is there?
• Cable routes: Where do trays run along the ceiling or wall, and what do fire protection and the cantonal building insurance say about it?
• Parking spaces: Do they belong to the apartments, or are they rented? That determines who pays and who decides.
• Access: How do users reach their EV charger, and how do we stop outsiders from charging?

The result is a concept you can present to property management or the owners’ meeting, with a plan, costs and process.

Billing per user

Whoever charges pays for their own electricity. There are two common ways to do this:

• Meter per EV charger: Each wallbox measures the consumption. The data goes automatically to a billing system.
• Apartment meter: The charging electricity runs through the apartment’s meter. This is simple, but only possible with suitable wiring.

Property management sets the tariff. It usually consists of the electricity price and a small share for operation and administration. As a smart-me Partner 2025, we rely on metering and software that deliver data without manual effort. Property management receives the billing digitally.

The split of costs matters too. The basic installation is usually part of the shared parts and is borne by everyone. The wallbox itself is paid for by whoever uses it. How exactly this is arranged in the building is decided by the owners’ meeting or property management. We show you examples of how other buildings solve it.

What does the charging infrastructure cost?

The costs depend heavily on the building. All figures are guide values, not prices:

Item	Guide value
Wallbox per parking space	around CHF 800 to 2,500
Basic installation per parking space	depends heavily on cable route and distribution board
Load management and metering	one-off for the building, plus costs per charging point

Subsidies for EV chargers in apartment buildings exist depending on the canton, commune and energy supplier. We check what currently applies for your address. On request, we pre-finance the contributions we apply for. You receive the binding quote within 72 hours of the site visit.

How the project runs with property management and the owners’ association (STWEG)

1. Enquiry: Online in one minute or by phone.
2. Site visit: We check the distribution board, house connection, cable routes and parking spaces. Free of charge.
3. Quote within 72 hours: binding, with a concept for load management, metering and billing.
4. Decision: In condominium ownership, the owners’ meeting decides. We provide documents, cost split and process, so that the proposal is clear.
5. Registration with the grid operator: We submit the necessary documents.
6. Installation: Our own installers, in agreement with property management, to disturb the underground car park as little as possible.
7. Commissioning: We test the EV chargers and load management and brief property management on the billing.

EV charging infrastructure in your region

Our locations are in Zumikon ZH and Lachen SZ. We plan EV charging infrastructure for apartment buildings across German-speaking Switzerland, most often in the Cantons of Zurich, St. Gallen, Schwyz and Aargau.

Enter your postcode in the appointment card. We will get in touch and arrange the free site visit.