What advantages does this measure have over fuel taxes?
As far as I know, (higher) fuel taxes are more effective, much more fair, create better incentives and have more scientific evidence backing them up than this, but I may be missing something.
Advantage is through the coupled mechanism. There's a chicken and egg problem for consumers of EVs. People are less likely to buy EVs because there aren't many charging ports so they take on extra risk and cost while betting that the future will allow them to regain similar conditions to their ICE vehicle. Filling stations are also at a similar risk investment situation as they don't want to build charging stations when there aren't enough EVs on the road to justify their costs.
So consumers and filling stations are stuck in a Nash Equilibrium because neither wants to take on the market bet. Both will actually suffer losses for moving first and realistically will not receive rewards for investing early (i.e. there is little to no opportunity cost). So Germany is shifting the risk away from the consumer.
But this is just a guess and I'm sure there are naive aspects about it. But it is also naive to just assume that everything can be solved with taxes and incentives. Though I hope this policy has some aspect that creates opportunity costs for not installing charging stations (i.e. gov will subsidize stations installing them at a decreasing rate)
Germany already has 0.65€/liter ($2.60/gal) fuel taxes, and on top of that there's the regular 19% VAT.
One issue the German state is trying to solve is that even charging stations that aren't economically profitable can be valuable to the overall system. Something along the lines of "you barely ever need that charger, but having it available solves range problems that would otherwise prevent you from getting an EV".
> What advantages does this measure have over fuel taxes?
It's about the order of operations.
Ubiquitous fast charging infrastructure makes it much easier for people to make the switch to EVs, especially for people who don't have the ability to charge at their homes.
Lacking that, increasing gasoline taxes will just anger people who don't have access to a practical electric fueling option.
Ensuring infrastructure is available everywhere is one of the most important roles of governments. Imagine buying a car if there were only roads in some cities instead of everywhere, doesn't make much sense. This ensures you will have charging stations everywhere, and that greatly increases the value of electric cars.
Fuel taxes don't address the same issue. Availability of chargers is a blocker for EV adoption. The measure directly helps with that problem, while fuel taxes is a more indirect push. In other words, even if you are heavily pushed by fuel taxes, if you have a blocking barrier with charging infrastructure, buying an EV won't be feasible to begin with.
As far as I know, (higher) fuel taxes are more effective, much more fair, create better incentives and have more scientific evidence backing them up than this, but I may be missing something.