Electromobility: goals vs. reality?
To reduce polluting CO2 emissions from combustion engines, the EU plans to have thirty million electric cars on its roads by 2030. Many member states are offering purchase premiums and tax breaks for electric cars, as well as subsidies for charging stations to achieve this goal. A look at the commentary columns reveals that once again the practice is turning out to be more complicated than the theory.
Charging stations for everyone!
A new study by the Swedish Broadcasting Corporation shows that charging stations for e-cars are mainly placed where people with high incomes live. A well-known mistake, criticises Aftonbladet:
“Society's support for climate protection has been targeted with almost surgical precision at groups that have already benefited from it in the past. It is not in poor suburban communities that charging stations are mushrooming. When it rains manna, the poor, as usual, are left without a spoon. The need for change is clear. But aid must reach the whole of society if we want people to commit to change.”
Stop funding hybrids
Politiken says it's time to end government subsidies for polluting hybrid cars in favour of electric mobility:
“There is no shame in making a mistake, and when parliament passed the car package it was less obvious that hybrid cars were as polluting as they have turned out to be. However, it would be unforgivable to continue spending billions on them. ... The cars of the future will be electric. ... For 4.2 billion kroner [roughly 560 million euros] you can build a lot of charging stations and do something good for the climate.”
E-cars still a luxury
Carlos Tavares, CEO of the automaker Stellantis, said recently that e-cars are far too expensive even for high earners. Trends-Tendances largely agrees:
“When horse-drawn carriages gave way to cars with internal combustion engines, the jobs of coachmen and grooms disappeared and only the rich could afford a car with an internal combustion engine. But with technological progress, the car became affordable for everyone after a few decades. Today's mentality, however, is no longer the same. It's hard to imagine that a large part of the population will have to wait 10 or 15 years before they can buy a decent electric car. So who is going to pay for the transition and absorb the loss of jobs?”