Going-Electric is the guest speaker for the April 2010 Comment:Visions broadcast on Euronews, answering the question “If the transition to electric vehicles is so important, then why isn’t it happening faster?” in a six minutes interview.
La Chine espère devenir LE PREMIER MARCHÉ DU MONDE et veut voir ses constructeurs y régner en maîtres.
LA CHINE A DÉCIDÉ de subventionner son industrie de véhicules propres et annoncé la semaine dernière pour chaque voiture vendue une subvention conséquente pour le constructeur ainsi qu’une économie pour l’acheteur.
Dans le cadre d’une adhésion croisée, Going-Electric et l’AVEM se rapprochent et permettent aux visiteurs de leurs sites Internet respectifs de s’informer davantage sur les véhicules électriques.
Fondée en 1997, l’association pour l’Avenir du Véhicule Électrique Méditerranéen (AVEM) a pour but de promouvoir toutes les actions qui concourent au développement ou à l’utilisation du véhicule électrique.
Going-Electric and AVERE strongly believe that in the medium future, the car market will become fully electric. Preparing for this future requires heavy investments from car manufacturers and public authorities. Therefore, all available resources should be exclusively focussed on developing electric car technologies and markets in order to ensure the future competitiveness of the European automotive industry. [...]
On 9 February 2010, the upcoming Belgian EU Presidency decided to consult the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) for an exploratory opinion on the topic “Towards a widespread use of electric vehicles“. The Section for Transport, Energy, Infrastructure and the Information Society organized on 12 April 2010 a hearing in view of completing the Committee’s work on the subject, in which Going-Electric was invited to present its views.
Going-Electric emphasises that the focus should be put on the right question, which is: “In which technologies should Europe and the car industry invest?”
Considering that the technology of the future is clearly electric vehicles and that this future could happen very soon if public authorities provide the right incentives, Europe and its car industry should massively invest in them. Given that resources are limited, they should stop investing in other technologies. This is essential to maintain the competitiveness of the EU car industry [...]
The European Commission issued yesterday a Communication to the European Parliament, the Council and the European Economic and Social Committee on a European strategy on clean and energy efficient vehicles.
While Going-Electric praises the Commission for being less technologically neutral and recognizing electric technologies as clean options, we deeply regret that it does not focus all available financial resources on Electric Vehicles. Their technologies are by far the cleanest, well mature enough for large market penetration. But they require heavy investments and temporary public incentives to spread on the roads.
Going-Electric is convinced that focusing all resources on electric technologies is essential to ensure the future competiveness of the European vehicle industry, against some Asian and American companies that are already doing so.[...]
En septembre, Going-Electric a rencontré Michel Vilatte, le nouveau président de la FIGIEFA (Fédération Internationale des Grossistes Importateurs et Exportateurs de Fournitures Automobiles). Cette fédération internationale localisée à Bruxelles regroupe 28 organisations professionnelles nationales de distributeurs grossistes automobiles. L’interview était bien-sûr centrée autour du véhicule électrique et de son impact sur les métiers de la FIGIEFA.
The Department of Energy has closed its $465 million loan with Tesla Motors, Inc. for construction of a manufacturing facility in southern California on the Model S electric sedan and a power-train manufacturing facility in Palo Alto, California. The Palo Alto facility will assemble electric vehicle battery packs, electric motors, and related electric vehicle control equipment, both for Tesla’s own electric vehicles and for sale to other automobile manufacturers.
Under the Spanish Presidency, EU plans to draft a European strategy to address the obstacles facing their implementation. This strategy could be adopted during next spring. The Spanish EU Presidency presented a discussion paper that puts forward several issues for discussion by the delegations.
AVERE and Going-Electric congratulate the Spanish EU Presidency for this excellent initiative towards a common European strategy on electric vehicles. In particular, we highlight the following points:
1. We clearly favour two technologies: Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs) and Extended-Range Electric Vehicles (EREVs).
2. New EU categories of vehicle homologation should be created for very small electric cars. We propose 2 new categories: Ultra-Small Urban electric Cars (USUC) and Ultra-Narrow Urban electric Cars (UNUC) for EVs that are confined by design to daily commuting and urban driving.
3. Governments should focus on making it possible for EV drivers to charge close to where they live.
On 5 September, in Friedrichshafen, more than 60 companies attended a meeting and unanimously voted in favor of a review of the current regulations for electric bicycles and light electric mopeds. They gave ETRA a mandate to represent them and to initiate a consultation with the European Commission.
On 25 September a second meeting took place in Las Vegas at Interbike and on 29 September there was a meeting in Brussels. These two meetings, attended by more than 30 companies, resulted in concrete proposals for the modification of the legislation.
The industry believes that the proposed modifications are necessary in order to prevent legislation from obstructing innovation, technical development, diversification and competition.
The complete proposal for modification is available on ETRA website here
Association for Electric Vehicles in Europe