In February, Mobility Portal Group convened organizations and representatives from leading companies in the electromobility sector for a three-day event to discuss industry issues.
Representatives from the Latin American and Spanish sectors presented their viewpoints on February 27th and 28th, respectively.
The third day, February 29th, was exclusively for Europe, where leaders discussed the latest trends in charging infrastructure.
Debates on high-power charging and the megawatt charging system, strategies and policies implemented by different governments, and the role of charging point operators (CPOs) were at the center of the discussions.
Soon, Mobility Portal Europe will announce a new virtual event.
Below is a list of the most notable quotes from the participants.
Ampeco
Glenn L’Heveder, Head of Business Development and Sales for Europe at Ampeco:
“France has created the highest number of subsidies for electric mobility in Europe because it has always been a priority on President Emmanuel Macron’s agenda. He is quite close to eMobility entrepreneurs.”
AVERE
Philippe Vangeel, Philippe Vangeel, Secretary General at the European Association for Electromobility (AVERE):
“Last year, we took a big leap in Europe, and public chargers grew. There are 176,495 according to the official registry. This is a significant number.”
Be.EV
Asif Ghafoor, CEO & Co-Founder at Be.EV:
“The challenge today is that the capital goes directly to Local Authorities, and they have to determine how to spend that money. Some must be allocated for lamppost charging, some for street chargers, and the rest for parking charging. They don’t know what to do with the funding, and that’s a barrier.”
Cityfi
Evan Costagliola, Senior Principal at Cityfi:
“Europe is ahead of the United States but behind countries like China. Last year, European Union countries had just 650,000 public chargers, and if you count non-members, the number rises to 775,000. A quarter of them must be located in Norway.”
European Commission
Rein Juriado, Policy Officer at the European Commission:
“Today, the Commission published a new tender within its financing mechanism. This is the CEFT (Connecting Europe Facility Transport). This program promotes the installation of infrastructure for alternative fuels.”
KNOT
Polina Mikhaylova, COO at Knot:
“Government involvement is often counterproductive because we’ve had some projects where our system was funded as an experiment. While it’s good quick money, when the bicycles sit dusty in the parking lot and nobody uses them for years, the results of the experiment are disastrous.”
Megacharge
Axel Van Lombeek, Managing Director at Megacharge:
“In the Dutch market, it’s clear that congestion is a big problem, as there isn’t capacity to supply our chargers. Now we’re focusing more on how we can install more reliable available equipment and maintain the price.”
Norsk elbilforening
Sveinung André Kvalø, Senior Advisor at Norsk elbilforening (Norwegian EV Association):
“The high adoption rate of electric passenger cars in Norway, which is around 90 per cent, is mainly due to our high taxes, which reach 43,000 euros on polluting cars. That’s our game.”
Polish Chamber of Electromobility Development
Krzysztof Burda, President at the Polish Chamber of Electromobility Development (PIRE):
“The Polish market still remains at the initial stage of development, and we are witnessing rapid growth in the electromobility market. Our initiatives are related to this market.”
Pluginvest
Sander Hereijgers, CEO at PlugInvest:
“In the southern region of Belgium, there are fewer vehicle and charging infrastructure companies. Additionally, the government there is less supportive of public infrastructure, so fast chargers or semi-public ones are lagging behind compared to the northern area.”
Stuart Energy
Auste Pranckute, Co-Founder at Stuart Energy:
“We have a subsidy where companies don’t have to pay taxes if they acquire passenger cars up to 50,000 euros, so we are growing in terms of electric car sales. Additionally, we have subsidies for both private and public AC and DC charging networks.”
Willbert
Marek Gutt-Mostowy, CEO & Founder at Willbert:
“The market for us is quite extensive, but at the moment, our target customers are new CPOs who don’t have a legacy solution and can thus focus on almost our entire hardware and software package.”
