Much has been said about when the electric car would be a reality and would come out of the vicious circle.
- Consumers do not buy electric cars for being expensive and having no availability of chargers.
- The infrastructure of chargers is not developed due to lack of electric cars
- The automobile industry does not produce more electric cars because of the lack of demand.
In recent years there have been a significant number of changes that have broken this vicious circle facilitating the arrival of the electric car.
The progress in battery development and the increasing demand have managed to reduce costs and improve their performance considerably. The result of this is an electric car with an affordable price (below € 30,000) and more important, with considerable autonomy (around 300km). This last point also clears what is called “autonomy anxiety” although studies say that the european citizens do between 30km-40km per day on average. So today there is already a competitive product, especially for consumers who use the car every day to get to work.
“The batteries are now cheaper and better allowing autonomies of more than 300kms in more affordable cars”
Despite the existence of affordable cars with considerable autonomy, there are countries that have deficient charge infrastructures. But in the last few years there are different alternatives in urban mobility with electric vehicles that are helping to develop the infrastructure of charges.
We are talking about companies like Car2go or Emov, some of these companies supported directly by major manufacturers. These companies are developing a core freight network in cities that together with the public initiative is providing the necessary infrastructure. The legislation is also helping to facilitate the installation of chargers in community car parks with the possibility of loading in homes and other centers.
Finally, we are looking at how the supply of electric cars is increasing significantly. We can already find a variety of brands that offer small cars for urban use with significant autonomy at competitive prices, high-end cars with long-range autonomy, commercial vehicles and many others in process to meet the needs of the market.
“The big manufacturers have finally bet on the electric car by introducing more variety of cars in the market”
The electric car is here, the progress in battery technology has broken the vicious cycle of consumer-charging infrastructure – and manufacturer we mentioned at the beginning of the article.
