Page 12 - bne_newspaper_March_08_2019

Central Europe
March 8, 2019 www.intellinews.com I Page 12
Electric vehicles still in the slow lane in CEE
Clare Nuttall in Glasgow
Sales of electric vehicles (EVs) in the European Union are lagging both China and the US, and EU member states in the eastern part of the bloc are well behind their western counterparts.
A new report from environmental consultancy Transport and Environment (T&E), “Trump’s US overtakes the EU in electric car race”, reveals that in 2018 the US became the second largest electric passenger car market in the world, with 361,000 EVs sold during the year. The EU had a slight edge in EV sales for years, but was overtaken by the US in 2Q18, and sales surged by 120% in the US in the final quarter.
This compares to 302,000 electric cars sold in the EU in 2018, while China remains the prime market for electric vehicle sales, with over 1mn sold during the year, including more than 150,000 in December alone.
A breakdown by country shows a clear divide between the west and east of the European Union. The eleven largest EV markets within the EU are all member states from the western part of the bloc. They are led by Sweden, where EV sales reached 8% of total vehicle sales in 2018, followed by the Netherlands, Finland, Portugal, Austria and the UK.
Hungary was the largest EV market from the eastern part of the bloc in 2018, and the only country from the region where EV sales exceeded 1% of total vehicle sales. The lowest proportion of EV sales across the 28 member bloc was in Poland, but sales were also minimal in Slovakia,
A BMW charging at GreenWay's Efacec Fast Charger in Senec, Slovakia. GreenWay has the CEE region's largest network of public EV charging stations.
Greece, Estonia, the Czech Republic, Lithuania and Romania.
Looking at the reasons for the slower growth
in EV sales in the EU, T&E writes that, "EU carmakers have been holding back EV sales to ‘save’ zero-emission cars right until the end to comply with stricter CO2 limits in 2020 and 2021.”
"EU carmakers have seen electric cars as a necessary evil to comply with regulation and evidence shows they've been suppressing supply and sales in 2018, in an attempt to protect their diesel business,” commented Lucien Mathieu, e-mobility analyst with T&E.
“Meanwhile China is racing ahead and even Trump’s America has now overtaken Europe thanks to the Tesla-fueled EV sales boom."
An issue examined by other industry observers is the availability of electric vehicle charging points. To date, the number of EV chargers has been much lower in Eastern European countries, holding back development of the market.
While there were around 2,550 rapid charging sites installed on European main roads as of 2018, they are very unevenly distributed across the continent. Specifically, there are close to zero charging points per 60km of highway in the region from Hungary and Slovenia in the north to Greece in the south. “The lack of coverage in Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Greece is notable and needs to be addressed to enable EVs to be used EU-wide,” the report says.