Brussels wants Europe's standards organisations to develop common charging system for electric vehicles. The European Commission wants to ensure that "all types of electric vehicles and their batteries are charged both safely and easily in all EU Member States". Such 'meddling' by Europe is just the sort of thing we need if drivers are to overcome 'range anxiety', the thought of running out of charge before you reach your destination.
One person who should welcome the idea is Elon Musk, who has just seen a successful initial public offering of shares in Tesla, the company set up in 2003 "by a group of intrepid Silicon Valley engineers who set out to prove that electric vehicles could be awesome". (Do they really talk like that in California?) The Financial Times reports Musk's claims that he had put $74 million of his own money into Tesla. After its first day on the market, the company was worth something like $2 billion.
You do have to wonder if the people who shovelled money into Tesla had read another useful document that has just appeared from the International Energy Agency, the Electric and Plug-in Hybrid Vehicle (EV/PHEV) Roadmap. The report says that a lot needs to happen before we see many electric vehicles on our roads.
The roadmap claims that, for the first time, it "identifies a detailed scenario for the evolution of these types of vehicles and their market penetration, from annual production of a few thousand to over 100 million vehicles by 2050".
The target is for half of the vehicles sold in 2050 to be electric, with global sales of "at least 5 million EVs and PHEVs (combined) per year" by 2020. These are big numbers that will not happen by chance, and certainly not with the boy racer vehicles of the sort that Tesla sells to the likes of Hollywood superstars for $100,000.
The IEA warns that national governments have to take the lead in strategic planning efforts "by working with 'early adopter' metropolitan areas, targeting fleet markets, and supporting education programmes and demonstration projects via government-industry partnerships". The report does not use the subsidy word here, but elsewhere it refers to a Chinese government subsidy of RMB 50,000 ($7,300). In the US, Tesla also hopes to ride on government subsidies as it brings to market something that will sell at a more sane but still expensive $50,000.
The IEA's roadmap also mentions standards. While it advocates moves to standardise the vehicle-to grid interface, it warns that, "it is important to avoid over regulating in order to allow for innovation". That will be music to the ears of the current UK government, which probably sees standards and subsidies as swear words. It can't, though, hide forever behind the need to cut budgets.
The new administration needs to start being in favour of something, anything. Electric cars might be a good place to start to create the "comprehensive policy framework" that the IEA's roadmap advocates.
The UK government has already warned that it will not bail out car makers. With luck, it will not interpret 'meddling' like this, perhaps even a subsidy or two, as a bail out. Or is carbon reduction something that we cannot afford any more, like new trains and road improvements?
The IEA suggests developing national roadmaps for electric cars. Such roadmaps, it says, can "set national targets and help stakeholders better set their own appropriate targets, guide market introduction, understand consumer behaviour, advance vehicle systems, develop energy, expand infrastructure, craft supportive policy and collaborate, where possible". In other words, governments have to take a lead.
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