It is interesting that the big selling brands are Skoda (VW group) and VW itself, then a resurgent Tesla in third place. These are companies that are claiming hardship from Chinese EV imports and VW is planning to lay off 100K employees.
Denmark is right next to Germany, so has a high affinity for German car brands. Even with worse specs than the chinese imports, the danes feel the german brands are a higher quality a more stable producer who will be there for the long run, so service and guarantees can be trusted.
> it's not very difficult to put some cables in the ground and install a big pre built metal box :)
But increasingly it's becoming a problem that those cables have nowhere to run to as the grid isn't capable of serving them all. There might be excess generation but unless you have the capacity in the wires to get it where it's needed you're still stuck.
Especially in dense old cuties where the grid was built when the goal was to power a bunch of incandescent light bulbs. Not all the appliances we have today let alone cars with a battery capacity equal to a household's weekly usage of electricity when the grid was designed.
The problem can be alleviated with more chargers. If every parking spot had a charger you can slow-charge with much lower pressure on the grid. 2kW over night are plenty for most people’s driving needs.
Is it really that much harder than making the magic juice that legacy cars run on? By now it is cheaper and less reliant on despots all over the world to get electricity than fuel in most of Europe I assume. Electricity is a great interface as well given the actual source of energy doesn't matter as much and is interchangeable.
Not in Norway. Most people live in actual houses, whether they are detached and freestanding or attached, you still have a place for your car and therefore the opportunity install a charger.
I don't own a car myself, but there are public EV charging points opposite my apartment in Denmark, and some in the (small) private underground parking garage.
I have rented the pay-per-minute electric cars a few times, and have always found it easy to get a discount on the next journey by leaving it plugged into a charger.
Plus neither is house ownership. I'd say there is a decent correlation between apartment living vs house and the access to public transport. At least in Europe.
The ground floor of apartment buildings in my country (not europe, india) is almost always reserved for parking. It is mandated though not uniformly followed in my city that there be 18 parking spots for my 8 house building. We follow it, and found it really easy to install EV charging ports for each one.
No. And it's not the number of charging stations, it's the general shittiness of those. You never know how much you will pay per kWh, there are apps, networks, roaming agreements, cards, getting through this mess and starting to charge is always a challenge and takes a significant time (sometimes comparable to charging time!). You also get gouged on pricing, companies clearly set it so that the cost of 100km is comparable to that of a gas-powered vehicle. And for some reason people think EVs can only charge by backing into a stall, never in a drive-through bay like gasoline vehicles.
I own an EV and enjoy it a lot. I would not even consider buying a gas vehicle again. But while charging at home is great, charging during a trip is annoying. This needs regulation.
Are charging stations subsidized? That could be a good excuse to add regulations.
I've heard the subsidies are the reason why there's so many shitty charging stations. People build them, collect the subsidies, and never actually care about running it well. A silver lining is at least the space is reserved once we decide to get serious about fixing this as a society.
Charging stations just need to function like regular gas stations.
Prices need to be made available online and prominently displayed at the entrance of the station. They shouldn't allow cheaper prices for subscriptions or even blocking any access without one.
It is interesting that the big selling brands are Skoda (VW group) and VW itself, then a resurgent Tesla in third place. These are companies that are claiming hardship from Chinese EV imports and VW is planning to lay off 100K employees.
Denmark is right next to Germany, so has a high affinity for German car brands. Even with worse specs than the chinese imports, the danes feel the german brands are a higher quality a more stable producer who will be there for the long run, so service and guarantees can be trusted.
Overall all long-term tests suggest they are correct and they are higher quality. They are less flashy but build is better.
Has the EV charging infrastructure kept pace with the EV adoption?
At least here in Norway it has, it seems like it's not very difficult to put some cables in the ground and install a big pre built metal box :)
Most gas stations have them and there is also a lot of street charging stations.
But it's still cheapest to charge at home.
> it's not very difficult to put some cables in the ground and install a big pre built metal box :)
But increasingly it's becoming a problem that those cables have nowhere to run to as the grid isn't capable of serving them all. There might be excess generation but unless you have the capacity in the wires to get it where it's needed you're still stuck.
Especially in dense old cuties where the grid was built when the goal was to power a bunch of incandescent light bulbs. Not all the appliances we have today let alone cars with a battery capacity equal to a household's weekly usage of electricity when the grid was designed.
The problem can be alleviated with more chargers. If every parking spot had a charger you can slow-charge with much lower pressure on the grid. 2kW over night are plenty for most people’s driving needs.
It's much harder to make a magic juice that moves though the cables and boxes ;)
Is it really that much harder than making the magic juice that legacy cars run on? By now it is cheaper and less reliant on despots all over the world to get electricity than fuel in most of Europe I assume. Electricity is a great interface as well given the actual source of energy doesn't matter as much and is interchangeable.
Most people charge EVs at home most of the time.
In Europe? A lot of people live in apartment buildings
Not in Norway. Most people live in actual houses, whether they are detached and freestanding or attached, you still have a place for your car and therefore the opportunity install a charger.
I don't own a car myself, but there are public EV charging points opposite my apartment in Denmark, and some in the (small) private underground parking garage.
I have rented the pay-per-minute electric cars a few times, and have always found it easy to get a discount on the next journey by leaving it plugged into a charger.
This says there are over 50,000 charging points: https://eletric-vehicles.com/general/denmarks-public-ev-char...
EV adoption is not uniformly distributed among the population.
Plus neither is house ownership. I'd say there is a decent correlation between apartment living vs house and the access to public transport. At least in Europe.
The ground floor of apartment buildings in my country (not europe, india) is almost always reserved for parking. It is mandated though not uniformly followed in my city that there be 18 parking spots for my 8 house building. We follow it, and found it really easy to install EV charging ports for each one.
No. And it's not the number of charging stations, it's the general shittiness of those. You never know how much you will pay per kWh, there are apps, networks, roaming agreements, cards, getting through this mess and starting to charge is always a challenge and takes a significant time (sometimes comparable to charging time!). You also get gouged on pricing, companies clearly set it so that the cost of 100km is comparable to that of a gas-powered vehicle. And for some reason people think EVs can only charge by backing into a stall, never in a drive-through bay like gasoline vehicles.
I own an EV and enjoy it a lot. I would not even consider buying a gas vehicle again. But while charging at home is great, charging during a trip is annoying. This needs regulation.
Are charging stations subsidized? That could be a good excuse to add regulations.
I've heard the subsidies are the reason why there's so many shitty charging stations. People build them, collect the subsidies, and never actually care about running it well. A silver lining is at least the space is reserved once we decide to get serious about fixing this as a society.
Charging stations just need to function like regular gas stations.
Prices need to be made available online and prominently displayed at the entrance of the station. They shouldn't allow cheaper prices for subscriptions or even blocking any access without one.
In another news the sales of +10 years old diesel cars are not dropping in Romania and Bulgaria and Hungary and the Balkan countries
New diesel vehicles are 6.4% of sales in Romania, 15.4% in Bulgaria, 9.5% in Hungary, 12.2% in Croatia.
That's a drop except in Bulgaria, where it's the same as last year.
And if those 10+ year old diesels are replacing 15, 20+ year old diesels it's still an improvement.
https://www.acea.auto/pc-registrations/new-car-registrations...
How are diesel cars with a battery counted?
Cars under VAG sell TDI engines with a small battery and call it a hybrid.
The supply of 10+ year old EVs is rather limited, so that is not a very surprising fact.
Chinese EVs are making rapid inroads in the balkans, lots of new brands
True, I see lots of Teslas and BYDs here in Greece (and own a BYD). Wouldn't go back to ICE.