Promotion of alternative powertrains

Going-Electric's contribution to Question 6. of the European Commission's Consultation for a European strategy on Clean and Energy-efficient Vehicles.

Question 6: What actions should be best taken at regional/ national /European or international level to promote technology development and market uptake of alternative powertrains (electric and hydrogen)?

1. Governments should temporarily offer a mix of financial and non-financial incentives to early EV buyers in order to enable market penetration until EV prices become competitive.

As explained above in our answer to question 4.1, EVs are currently more expensive than equivalent ICVs only because of low production volumes. Since EVs bring benefits to society and not to their owners, it is the duty of governments to provide purchase incentives to consumers until EV prices fall at or below ICV prices. Purchase incentives should consist of a mix of both financial and non-financial incentives.

Financial incentives could include:

Subsidies on electric vehicles purchase
Tax reduction for households owning at least one electric vehicle
Reduced VAT rates on electric vehicles
Financial incentives to exchange a fossil fuels vehicle for a electric vehicles
Increased tax for families owning more than one ICVs
Exempting electric vehicles from registration fees and annual tax.

Experience in Norway and the UK has shown that non-financial advantages are very powerful purchase incentives – and they cost little to governments. Priorities include:

Allowing electric vehicles on bus lanes.
Creating express lanes reserved for clean and energy-efficient vehicles, including EVs, motorcycles, ultra-small vehicles and High Occupancy Vehicles (HOVs).
Exempting electric vehicles from tolls and congestion charges.
Installing parking places reserved for electric vehicles and equipped with a charging plug.
Providing free and unlimited public parking to electric vehicles.

2.1 Governments should make it possible for EV owners to charge next to where they live.

Obviously, no-one will buy an Electric Vehicle (EV) if he cannot charge it. And no-one will drive miles away to a remote charging station and wait hours for his EV to charge.

Charging plugs at the workplace may be useful on weekdays, but they are useless during week-ends and holidays, as well as for public transport commuters. While a minority of people have a garage at home or a charging plug available at the office, the majority will need to charge their battery on public space.

Also, it is best that EVs charge at night (i.e. near home) in order to use off-peak electricity, which is often largely produced with CO2-free electricity (such as wind turbines and nuclear).

Therefore, governments should first concentrate on making it possible for EV drivers to charge close to where they live. There are at least two possible options:

Either EV buyers are permitted to install a charging plug on the curbside next to their home at their own cost, and reserve the nearby parking space for their own EVs.
Or EV buyers are entitled to require the installation of a public charging station close to their home. It could simply take the form of a charging pole on the curbside next to a parking space reserved for EVs.

2.2 It is essential that charging on local standard plugs remains possible.

BEV's limited driving range is a drawback that is somewhat compensated by the fact that BEVs can be charged anywhere, onto any local standard power plug. This advantage is significant considering that the number of power plugs is about one million times higher than petrol stations.

While standardising fast charging plugs and systems is a good idea to enable interoperability between cars and plugs and avoid specific or proprietary solutions, it is essential that EV owners keep the possibility of charging their car wherever they are onto any local power plug. Therefore, charging standardisation must be limited to fast charging plugs and systems and exclude slow charging plugs.

3. EU car, battery and equipment manufacturers should be offered financial incentives to further develop EV technology and invest in production plants.

Both China and the USA have launched aggressive plans and distributed significant subsidies to develop their EV industry. Europe should do the same if it wants to maintain the competitiveness of its automotive industry. Priorities should include:

Subsidies for investments in the mass production of electric vehicle, automotive batteries and other EV parts.
Subsidies for research in advanced automotive battery technology, in order to enable EU battery industry to catch-up with foreign competition.
Subsidies for research in fuel cell technology, in view of applications in the transport sector as well as in the electricity generation sector (such as decentralised and domestic power stations).

4.1 Ultra-small vehicles should be promoted for urban usage.

Obviously, the fuel consumption of a vehicle increases with its size and weight. And bigger vehicles occupy more space and therefore increase traffic and parking congestion. However during last decades, cars weight had to increase in order to comply with increasingly stringent occupant safety regulations.

While such regulations are beneficial for high-speed driving, they are less useful for low speed driving, which is usually the case for daily commuting and urban driving - and they impede the development of ultra-small cars.

Electric quadricycles (L7e), being small, light and low-power, have the potential of being remarkably clean and energy-efficient, and should therefore be promoted. But they are too slow to be safe on freeways, which make them unpractical for a large number of commuters and urban dweller that have to use freeways in their daily trips.

4.2 New EU categories of vehicle homologation should be created for Micro Electric Cars.

Therefore, a new category of vehicles should be created, in-between quadricycles (L7e) and cars (M1), for Micro Electric Cars (MECs), whose usage would be confined to daily commuting and urban driving by limiting some of their specifications (such as range, speed, size and weight) while being fast enough to drive safely on freeways. Since they will mainly be used in low-speed traffic, MECs should be subjected to less stringent occupant safety regulations than M1 cars, which would allow making them smaller and lighter, hence cleaner and more energy-efficient. More info...

It may also be advisable to also create a MEC sub-category for Ultra-Narrow Electric Cars (UNECs) which are as narrow as motorcycles. UNECs would significantly reduce traffic and parking congestion while being safer than motorcycles. Several models of ultra-narrow electric cars are already announced (such as Renault Twizy) or in production (such as Lumeneo Smera and Commuters Car Tango). More info...

Being the most sustainable cars, UNECs should be entitled to some additional privileges, such as parking on motorcycle spaces and driving on the motorcycle lanes for which we advocate. More info...

4.3 Safety regulations should also address the impact of a crash onto other vehicles.

Until now, car safety regulations have concentrated on occupant safety (crash-test, airbags...). While this has a positive effect by reducing casualties for car occupants, it has resulted in bigger and heavier cars, which not only increases fuel consumption and emissions, but also increases the risk of casualties for small vehicles involved in accidents with big cars. It makes smaller car users feel unsafe and deters consumers from buying them.

Therefore safety regulations should also address crash impact onto other vehicles. This would be an effective way of reducing road casualties. Also, it would make small car users feel safer, which would be an incentive towards the purchase of smaller cars, thereby reducing emissions and energy consumption.

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