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What stops people from driving electric? † NOW

Electric driving has a number of advantages: you do not have to pay road tax, you are no longer at the pump for expensive fuel and until the end of 2024 there is a purchase subsidy available from the government. However, not everyone is convinced of electric driving. Owners of an electric vehicle also see sufficient points for improvement. In short, what prevents people from making the (final) switch?

Last March, the RAI Association and BOVAG wrote that in 2021 private individuals accounted for 21 percent of the sales of fully electric cars. The year before that, it was still 12 percent. When the purchase subsidy for an electric car became available again in January, the number of private registrations quickly rose to 56 percent of the total.

It’s a cliché, but the reason(s) for not driving electric yet will be very different for someone in the Zeeland countryside than for someone three-storey in the back of one of the big cities. However, there seem to be a number of motivations that stick out.

Participants in the annual Shell Recharge Solutions EV Driver Survey In 2022, they still point to the well-known pain points: the car brands would do well to provide more driving range, the availability of charging points must increase and the purchase price of an electric car must decrease.

Generations grew up with ease of refueling

The annual survey by Shell’s charging branch has nearly 15,000 respondents from five countries. In addition to the Netherlands and Germany, these are the United Kingdom, France and Belgium. The aforementioned findings and outcomes therefore only apply to that group, not to all drivers of electric cars in the countries mentioned.

“The issue of range remains a special one,” said Herman Keijsers, director of international sales and integration at Shell Recharge Solutions. “More and more models are getting further and further on a battery charge, while most people do not need it on a daily basis. At the same time, generations have naturally grown up with the ease of refueling and the very large driving range of fuel cars. For example, people have doubts about what to do with an electric car. car during the holidays.”

Joeri van Dam, specialist in the field of electric driving and author of the EV Yearbookrecognizes Keijsers’ reading and adds, with regard to the charging infrastructure, that although there are many charging points in terms of numbers, the public does not experience this as such.

“There are about fifty charging points per 100 kilometers in the Netherlands, but because a lot of charging points are concentrated in certain places, the coverage is sometimes not so good.”

‘We don’t really look at the costs per kilometer’

Another company that annually polls the mood of the public is charging solutions company EVBox. Also from that researchconducted by Ipsos among more than 4,000 participants in the Netherlands, France, Germany and the United Kingdom, shows that the purchase price and the availability of charging points are a cause for concern.

“Particularly private buyers mainly look at the purchase price and charge less to see what they can ultimately save,” says Van Dam.

Rico Luman, senior economist at think tank ING Think, has a similar view. “The tricky part is that an electric car pays for itself with the kilometers you drive. The disappearance of the BPM and MRB for fully electric cars is also less visible. The question is therefore how much is really looked at the costs per kilometer. .”

‘Requesting a charging station cumbersome’

The concerns surrounding the charging infrastructure are also no stranger to Luman. “More car drivers come into the picture who do not have their own driveway and charging point. Then you are dependent on the public infrastructure and the rates are higher. In addition, it is becoming busier at public charging stations, because the increase in the number of charging stations increases the number of electric vehicles. difficult to keep up with lately.”

The participants in Shell Recharge’s EV Drivers Survey also expressed concern about the pace at which the charging infrastructure is being rolled out and whether our electricity grid can handle it all.

“You can now have an electric car at your door almost faster than a charging station,” said Keijsers. “The number of steps you have to take for a charging point at home or on the street should be reduced”.

‘Price fall of new electric car is over for the time being’

You would say that people are making the switch to electric faster with current fuel prices. In the meantime, however, energy costs have also risen considerably, which means that electric drivers who quickly charge along the highway per 100 kilometers are almost as expensive as petrol drivers.

The decline in the average purchase price of electric cars has also stopped, Luman sees. “The price decline of the average new electric car is over for the time being. This is because more and more expensive electric SUVs have come onto the market and consumers are also interested in them. Another factor is that raw material prices have risen. This certainly applies to battery raw materials. Fortunately, there are more cheap models on the market and the choice makes the picture more favorable.”

The BMW iX, along with the Mercedes-Benz EQS SUV, is one of those expensive semi-off-road vehicles that were recently presented.

The BMW iX, along with the Mercedes-Benz EQS SUV, is one of those expensive semi-off-road vehicles that were recently presented.

The BMW iX, along with the Mercedes-Benz EQS SUV, is one of those expensive semi-off-road vehicles that were recently presented.

Photo: BMW



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