[EN] The Master Plan or how to switch Europe to EVs by 2030 - Part II
6. “The right to breathe” and necessary law changesToday we have the Universal Declaration of Human Right, but this is not including one of the fundamental rights to a human being: “The right to breathe”. There is the right to life, but how can a human live if he cannot breathe? Based on this right, every human being should be intitled to require the local authorities, state and ultimately the European Union to take immediate action against those that poison our air. Based on this right every human that has already done his part and is driving a zero-pollution car (100% electrically powered car) can ask that action should be taken against those that pollute excessively. Also based on this right, there should be a legal requirement that an EV should not be passed by a fossil car. Recognizing this right will empower those that want to take legal action but today have no legal grounds and the possibilities for clean air are endless. The most important legal change is recognizing “the right to breathe”, but there are other law changes that will be required and some that can help with the EV adoption:• Electric cars should have different license plates across the European Union – green background plates• There should be different speed limits set based on the propulsion type and safety futures of each car. If you drive an electrically powered car and you have safety futures like automatic emergency brake, you should be allowed to drive faster. If you drive a fossil car produced 10 years ago, you most likely are a danger to the others and speed limits should be set accordingly.• Member states should NOT REQUIRE VAT pay for new 100% electrical vehicles at least for the next few years – at list until 2025 or at list until 50% of new cars are EVs. Today is a nonsense, if you buy an EV your state instead of given you an incentive for your good action, is actually penalizing you by requesting VAT and artificially increasing the price of the car.• Simplify the authorization process to speed up the charging infrastructure installation• ICE car idling should be ban by low and the fine for this should be as high as possible. Idling today is an importance source of pollution and many people do this close to schools, kindergartens, hospitals or other public places.• Access and parking inside covered public lots should not be allowed for ICE cars. Today if you go to a store that has a covered parking lot, it is a completely pollution nightmare.• Owners of an ICE car that block a charging station should receive a substantial fine and their registration paper should be revoked for at least 30 days.• Priority to charge at all charging station should be set to 100% electrical vehicles. Hybrids are not electrical vehicles and they should not be allowed to block a charging spot.7. Make ICE cars hard to buyToday is way too easy to buy an ICE car and very hard to buy a normal electrical car. Even if the dealer is not trying to convince you to change your mind, they usually do not have any EVs on their inventory and you need to wait at least a few months for your car to arrive. This is one of the ways classical producers and their dealers try to slow down the EV adoption. Even that the demand is strong and people try to buy EVs, they make sure that the production is not fast enough so your waiting time to be reasonable.My proposal here is to make ICE car harder to buy and in the same time force the dealers to sell more EVS:• A customer should not be able to buy an ICE car before test driving an EV first for at least a few hundred kilometers or a few days. This test should be clearly documented, hard to cheat and before driving an EV and charging it a few times you should not be allowed to buy an ICE car.• When a customer enters a dealer to buy a new car, the dealer should be forced by law to present the EVs first and after present the ICE cars. If the dealer is selling only brands that do not produce yet electric cars, there should be a legal requirement to present a generic list of all electrical cars available in that country.• The wait time should be at least similar and if there is an order for an electrical car in place, the dealer should not be allowed to sell an ICE car before they deliver the EV. • Dealers should not be allowed do keep ICE cars in the showrooms. An ICE car should be presented only on open air, the space inside should be reserved only for EVs.• Test drive for ICE cars should not be allowed any more. If you are interested in buying a new car, you should only be able to test a normal, electrical car.• Dealers should not be allowed to keep ICE cars on their inventory, only EVs.• Every dealer should be forced by law to offer service for EVs they sell. If they do not offer service for EVs in a reasonable timeframe, they should not be allowed to sell any cars until they do.8. Stop all types of fossil fuel/ ICE cars incentives – including incentives for HybridsToday some countries (like Romania) in Europe have governmental programs to renew the fleet of cars on public roads and they offer incentives for everyone that is decommissioning an old car and buying a new one, regardless if this is an ICE car or worse is a diesel. This is a complete nonsense, because EURO standard is just a joke and the “new cars” pollute some times more then the ones they replace. So, in other world the government is paying for nothing, no pollution reduction and no health benefices.This type of incentives needs to stop completely and this should be clearly regulated by European Union. There should be no incentives for ICE cars, fossil fuel or fossil powered equipment of any type. This includes also the hybrids that are just another way of selling ICE on our health expense.9. Invest in a green electricity gridThere are many problems that European grid will face in order to completely switch to electrical vehicles, but the most important ones in my opinion will be power generation and distribution for final use.For power generation, like I said we need to decommission all coal plants, nuclear power plants, gas, biogas and cogeneration plants and replace them with renewable energy generation. It will be required also to have energy storage, because renewable energy is not available 24 hours per day, especially solar, and we need to be able to store energy to cover the demand.On the distribution side the biggest issue is that in some countries for some consumers (especially domestic ones) we have one power level declared and reserved for them on the distribution transformers and another power level actually used due to lack of physical limitations. Basically, the utility provider knows that a consumer can consume for example 5kWh on a monophasic line and in reality, that consumer is not limited and he can consume up to 7.3kWh because his breaker is 32A instead of 20A. We will need to invest more in energy measurement and also replace most of the breakers that permit overconsumption.10. Charging infrastructureHaving a charging infrastructure able to support the transition to electrical cars will be a huge challenge so this will require both public and private sustained efforts.On the public side, the authorities should facilitate as much as possible installation of charging stations and also allow some of these stations to be placed on public domain.A few measures that will help:- Limit the time needed for paper work required to install a new charging station. The required permits should be emitted as fast as possible and with priority over other permits. We need new stations and we will need them as fast as possible.- Based on the number of cars registered, each city should be required to offer places on the public domain for new charging stations. These places should be offered for free to private companies that want to install charging stations. It is in the public interest to have as many stations as possible inside cities and close to parking spots used overnight.- For a particular charging station and all equipment required (distribution panel, breaker box, etc.), there should be only one authorization process. Once a producer authorizes a charging station type, this authorization should be valid for all installations that will follow.- Local authorities should install charging stations free to use in the public parking areas, close to parks and recreation areas, close to schools and in all the areas that are used by a large amount of people.- Set the maximum tariff for a kWh of energy used for EV charging based on the acquisition price. Today there are stations that sell the kWh at more then 4 times the acquisition price and this type of practices should be stopped as soon as possible.On the private side, there will be a significant effort required, actually most of the effort will be on the private side. I will say that is in their best interest to help developing the charging infrastructure free or payed. For a shop is a very good decision even today to install charging stations that will be used by their customers. An EV owner that charges there, will spend more time shopping while his car is charging and this will mean more revenue for the shop.If you like this article please share it and hopefully a few of these measures will get to be implemented.Published by Marius Șerban at 11:10 on 22.04.2019 [EEST]