[NEWS] BSC: Slovenian difficulties on green cars. PT.2

Why is Slovenia lagging behind in achieving set goals of shifting to BEVs when it comes to personal cars?

Nowadays, Slovenia, like other European countries, has free regulation of fossil fuel prices on gas stations. However, the differences are not significant in most cases. According to the information given above, the prices for charging BEVs range from 0,01 EUR per kWh with a low night tariff at home, to 0,79 EUR per kWh on a public fast charging station. To make things slightly less complicated MOL is giving the fixed price per charging 7,9 EUR for a DC charging and 5,9 EUR for AC charging. One should not disregard that the difference in price is also due to the speed of charging. If a customer is in hurry and needs to charge faster, the cost can amount to more than 50 EUR for 80 % of the charged battery.

The owner needs to keep in mind that it is advised by the battery producers that the battery should not be fully emptied nor fully charged, which is in real life hard to maintain.

Most of the owners are expected to charge vehicles at home during the night and even if the battery is charged faster for the 80% and then the speed slows down, the battery will probably be charged 100% during the night. If trying to extend the life cycle of the battery and staying between 20% and 80% of the battery, the autonomy of the drive automatically reduces, without considering seasons, style of driving, speed on the highways and driving on the hilly terrain. The recuperation of energy going downhill is not 1 to 1.

Looking at the photo above, one can see different cards owners needs to have if using BEV for more than just urban driving and occasional longer drives to another region, where there might be a possibility to charge at the service provider of customer’s contracted choice and roaming agreements of the service provider. The above shown cards are just a few out of many, if one decides to travel by BEV across Europe. In Slovenia, the ad hoc payments are mostly available; however, they can be a bit more expensive. Each time a person cannot pay with cash a bit of one’s privacy is lost. In the world of social media, card payments, mobile phone service provision and open public data platforms providing somehow personal data to the public, another card that provides statistical data on where BEV user stops to charge and for how long is a more and more a minor aspect. Or is it?

What about if a Slovenian is living in a multi dwelling building and parks the BEV outside on the street? Some propose to hose down a cable through a window in order to charge the vehicle. Beside the issue of having a window open, regardless to the weather conditions or noise and maybe living on the 11th floor,  is not a recommended charging way by experts. Set-ups of charging infrastructure for multi dwelling building settlements are being planned, however, for this moment they are not yet established, due to costs of implementation vs. potential revenues. National subsidies are expected also for these investments.

Beside all mentioned above Slovenian Ministry of infrastructure seems to be putting more effort into promoting sustainable mobility – public transportation and reduction of the number of cars. In this regard it is odd that on the last day of the 2020 there was only 10 electric buses registered, among which all were minibuses. The Ministry of the Environment and Spatial Planning, responsible for subsidizing vehicles on alternative fuels through the Eco Fund mechanism, has not issued a call for subsidizing a purchase of electric buses since 2019.

Nevertheless, the Ministry of Infrastructure does have a strategy, is pro mobility on alternative fuels and supports any endeavour in this direction. In accordance with their efforts in promoting mobility on alternative fuels, they officially supported e-MOPOLI action plan proposing several actions for the promotion of mobility on alternative fuel to be included in the Operational programme for the implementation of the EU cohesion policy 2021-2027, by signing a declaration in February 2021.