Arriving at a recharging point and that it is “temporarily” out of service or having to download and register in an application -another one- in order to pay. These are some of the main complaints from electric vehicle drivers. However, most owners say they are satisfied with the purchase and agree that it is all a matter of planning.
“I travel about 5,000 kilometers every month through Catalonia and I have never been stranded, although it is true that you have to plan, but for this there are applications that indicate the existing charging stations, their availability and you can even reserve one of the points ”, explains Santi Martínez, owner of the startup KM 0 Energy. “Each trip requires a cargo project. You discover that the easiest thing is to find a McDonalds or a Vienna to load up, ”says the energy transition expert Joan Vila, in one of his Sunday articles in Diari de Girona.
Catalonia has close to 5,000 public access charging points, enough for a car park in which less than 1% of all registered vehicles are electric. In fact, the Business Association for the Development and Promotion of Electric Mobility (Aedive) estimates that the average use of charging facilities is only 5.7%. However, the Spanish Association of Automobile and Truck Manufacturers (Anfac) warns that Catalonia must triple its charging points, to 15,320, before the end of 2025, to comply with the requirements for reducing greenhouse gas emissions Greenhouse marked from the European Union.
Anfac has just presented its update of the Public Access Charging Infrastructure Map, which aims to be a “tool that helps the necessary planning and monitoring of the deployment of a charging infrastructure network that facilitates the incorporation of electrified vehicles in Spain”.
A step forward in this planning is the agreement reached, at the end of July, between the 27 countries of the European Union. They have committed that, by December 31, 2025, there will be at least one charging point for electric vehicles every 60 kilometers on the basic road network and every 100 kilometers on the rest of the routes of the integrated trans-European network. The next objective, to be achieved before 2028, is for drivers to find at least one charging point every 60 kilometers on at least 50% of non-main roads, an obligation that will be extended equally to the entire road network before January 1, 2031. On the other hand, progress is also being made so that users can pay directly with their credit card, without the need to register in any application.
What does not advance are the sales of 100% electric vehicles. The commercialization of the so-called alternative vehicles (electric, hybrid and gas) reaffirms itself as the first purchase option with a market share of 43.7%, ahead of gasoline (43.2) and diesel (13, 1%). However, the market for electrified cars, which includes hybrids, remains well below targets. In July, their sales increased by 50.3%, to 8,584 units, but only 3,404 were pure electric. And so far this year, they have reached 64,126 passenger cars, 11% of the market. “We are growing at a rate that is half that of Europe,” warned the general director of Anfac, José López Tafall, who specified that 110,000 electrified units should have been registered in the first semester to reach the goal of 190,000 sales in 2023.