Europe's car makers still struggle with universal electric charging plugs

Ford frets over whether grids are ready, while Renault feels boxed-in by bidirectional charging limitations.

Car makers bringing new electric vehicles to market in Europe are virtually united in common gripes — not about consumer demand or government subsidies, but about issues with plugs.

Ford Motor, for instance, is rolling out an all-electric Explorer model manufactured in Cologne. “There is one thing I am really concerned about,” Martin Sander, the head of the company’s electric vehicle, or EV, business in Europe, said in an interview: Getting the grid ready to receive electric cars from Norway in the north, to the Italian island of Sicily in the south.