Portugal and Renault-Nissan Alliance Implement EV Agreement for 2010
25 November 2008
The Government of Portugal and the Renault-Nissan Alliance announced a comprehensive partnership to deliver zero emission mobility to Portugal from 2010. The plan will utilize electric vehicles supplied by the Alliance, and will leverage an extensive charging network that will be built across Portugal over the next three years.
In July, Portugal became the first European country to establish a partnership directly with the Renault-Nissan Alliance to explore zero emission mobility. (Earlier post.) The goal was to address concerns such as global warming, dependence on oil and sustainable mobility. After four months of discussion and analysis, Portugal became the first European country to sign a final agreement with the Alliance for implementing a zero emission mobility program.
The plan calls for 1,300 vehicle charging locations to be operational by the end of 2011, with 320 of those locations already in place in 2010.
Portugal will also offer incentives to electric vehicle purchasers, including an income tax credit for individuals and corporate tax reductions for fleet purchases of electric vehicles. The tax incentives, which begin in late 2010, will last at least five years.
We realized early on that zero-emission mobility goes far beyond the vehicle itself. It requires extensive collaboration with government and other partners to ensure success.
—Carlos Tavares, executive vice president of Nissan Motor Co., Ltd.
The Government of Portugal is also mandating that 20% of public fleet vehicle purchases be zero-emission, starting in 2011.
Additional measures, such as reduced parking rates, preferential access and financing subsidies are being studied further. Public awareness and educational activities, including electric vehicle demonstrations, will begin in 2010.
The Renault-Nissan Alliance, which aims to be the global leader in zero-emission mobility, will bring electric vehicles to Portugal in early 2011, making Portugal one of the first countries to be supplied with electric vehicles from the Alliance. In 2012, Nissan and Renault will mass-market electric vehicles globally.
The Alliance has announced similar direct zero-emission mobility partnerships with Kanagawa Prefecture and Yokohama City in Japan, the States of Tennessee and Oregon, Monaco, Sonoma County in California, and the French utility giant EDF.
20% of the public fleet in just 2-3 years time! Now that's progress....
Posted by: clett | 25 November 2008 at 03:03 AM
There is less reason to be optimistic now for the future of EVs because
1) with oil at 50 USD per barrel the economics of EVs does not look good. Oil need to go above 100 USD.
2) the financial crises makes it very difficult to get anything financed such as the planned lease of the batteries.
The oil price problem for EVs may be gone by 2011 but the financial crisis could take 10 years as it did in Japan's debt crisis in the 1990’ies. Some other uncertainties are that we still don’t have a good idea of what it will cost to mass produce the automotive grade lithium batteries. Is it 500 USD per kWh or is it more or less? We will only know when mass production is a reality and that is still years away. Another uncertainty is that we don’t know how easy it is to scale the production of these batteries. It will take years to build the necessary factories. I doubt that the global production capacity for automotive lithium batteries will be able to build over 100,000 pure EVs or 50 miles electric only PHEVs by 2011. It will be less. With global vehicle production at 50 million at least 100,000 is only 0.2% which is practically nothing.
Posted by: Henrik | 25 November 2008 at 04:25 AM
I think we will have PHEVs with smaller EV range than people are thinking about now.
What matters is the mpg rather than the EV miles.
The prius is pretty good with a 1.8 KWh battery - with say 5 KWh, you could do quite a bit of city driving in EV mode while leaving most or all open road driving for the ICE.
In the absence of a breakthrough in batteries this is where the best use of resources is.
the trick will be to use machine learning software to get the best use (and lifetime) out of a battery of any given size.
Thus, you will still charge the battery at night, and perhaps in the workplace if a charging station is available.
What you want is a set of rules (battery map?) to make the system run optimally whether you have a 2/3/4/5/6 10 20 40 KWh battery in the vehicle.
Also, perhaps a GPS + memory device you put in your existing car to learn your driving paterns for a week or so which then suggests the best battery size for the next PHEV you might buy.
We do not have to use the "largest battery possible" solution - we may be able to approach this in a more subtle manner in terms of battery sizing.
Posted by: mahonj | 25 November 2008 at 05:32 AM
Henrik if we let OPEC determine the future of electric cars we know what will happen. The US and governments around the world need to take control of gas prices with a flexible tax rate that goes up when the price comes down and down when the price goes up. That's fair to the US oil industry because they know what they can sell their product for, and it helps US industry and consumers budget and eventually wean themselves off gas. It's like what we do with tobacco.
Free markets are great except when they are not free. When OPEC controls the supply, it's not a free market. When the price is low like it is now the government could be raking in billions in tax revenue to invest in EV infrastructure. We all know the pump needs to be turned off if the planet is going to survive, and even if you could care less about the planet, you must understand that the supply is not endless. At some point you have to have government controls or we will go through decades of feast and famine.
Posted by: creativforce | 25 November 2008 at 06:57 AM
OT but fun- http://www.opb.org/programs/ofg/videos/view/56-Electric-Drag-Racing
Posted by: ai_vin | 25 November 2008 at 02:57 PM
Does anybody out there know more about the lithium ion batteries being suggested for EVs? What are the specifications, who is the manufacturer and how to deal with the spent batteries? I don't hear anybody talking about the potential environmental nightmare of worn out storage batteries. Also, how many miles can a battery be reasonably projected to produce before impotence?
Posted by: tony w | 16 December 2008 at 10:08 PM