Electric cars - the chicken or the egg?

Electric cars are a hot topic lately. Regardless of the current advantages (no local emissions, the emissions of the electricity production are easier to control) and disadvantages (limited range, long battery charging time, high purchase cost), electric cars are in full development and are likely to play an increasing role in the future.

Before a real breakthrough can take place, electric cars must face achicken-egg dilemma. As long as there is no grid for charging the cars, people won’t buy electric cars. At the hand, as long as there are no cars, nobody wants to invest in a grid of charging poles.

Denmark however launched aprogramto add easy access to charging stations:

But now the biggest Danish power company is working with a Silicon Valley start-up (called “Better Place”) in a $100 million effort to wire the country with charging poles as well as service stations that can change out batteries in minutes.

Next to the grid development, other actions are taken in order to facilitate the introduction of electric cars:

The government offers a minimum $40,000 tax break on each new electric car — and free parking in downtown Copenhagen.

Since the oil shocks, Denmark has been a forerunner in the development of green technology. Also in this case, the Danish government has ambitious plans:

“We want to be a test and laboratory country for electric cars, hybrid cars and other new technology,” said Lars Barfoed, the Danish minister of transport. “And as host of the climate change conference, that’s made us feel responsible and want to show the world we can do something.”

Even with all this support and enthusiasm, someremarkshave to be made:

But even local supporters of Better Place worry that the switching stations, which could cost as much as $1 million each to build, are impractical, largely because the stations may need to stock a wide range of batteries to accommodate cars from different manufacturers.

“I’m skeptical about the infrastructure,” said Klaus Bondam, Copenhagen’s mayor for technical and environmental administration. “It won’t work unless it’s standard on every electric vehicle produced.”

All things considered, it will be interesting to see how this test-case will develop. Will there be abreakthroughof the electric car, or are people just not ready to make the switch, despite all government support?

In any case, this proves that if we don’t want to let Denmark take the absolute lead, it istime to take action: develop a charging grid, stimulate research, support innovative technologies and create standards.

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A lively discussion took place in the Flemish Parliament on government plans to invest in different projects, i.a. electric vehicles. In the transcript that you can read here, we learned that "Wallonisering" and the topics and views discussed on the Econoshock-blog were very prominent during the discussion.