Every new house in Europe to have an electric vehicle charging point by 2019
Is the take-up of electric cars about to accelerate?
A draft EU directive expected to be introduced by 2019 states that every new or refurbished house in Europe will need to be equipped with an electric vehicle recharging point. The guidelines due to be published by the end of the year will also state that ten per cent of parking spaces in new buildings in the EU zone will need recharging facilities.
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The infrastructure has been a roadblock to speeding up the take-up of electric cars; this directive aims to address that. It would increase the driving range, as well as the convenience of driving an electric car, while bolstering the numbers of recharge stations would also mean vehicles could then feed their electricity back into the grid.
If rolled out, it would be a chance for the rest of Europe to follow in Norway's footsteps, where the electric car market is booming. The government had encouraged drivers to switch to rechargeable electric vehicles in a drive to cut down on carbon dioxide emissions.
A range of tax breaks along with the building of an extensive network of charging stations has helped – for the first three months of 2016, 25 per cent of all newly registered cars in Norway were plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs), according to IHS. Electric vehicle registrations in the UK for the same period were 1.3 per cent comparatively.
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It comes as Germany steps up its push for electric vehicles – in the summer it passed a law stating that all new car registrations had to be zero emissions. To try and reach the targets outlined in the Paris global warming agreement, it now wants the rest of Europe to aim for a similar requirement by 2030.
Last month it was announced that 400 additional electric vehicle charging points would hit London's streets by the end of the year, after a deal was struck between Bluepoint London, TfL and 16 city boroughs.