Luxembourg to install an additional 800 electric vehicle recharge points by 2020
At a joint press conference today, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for the Economy Étienne Schneider, and Minister for Sustainable Development and Infrastructure, François Bausch, announced that there will be a significant increase in the number of electric and plug-in hybrid vehicle recharge points.
Over the course of the next 5 years an additional 800 recharge points, each capable of charging two vehicles simultaneously, will be installed. 400 of these will be in Park and Rides, where, according to Mr. Schneider, the long average parking time means that the majority of the installations will be the cheaper to install “slow chargers” (<= 3.7kw).
Every P+R with at least 35 places will be installed with at least one recharge point. Additionally another 400, this time primarily “accelerated” (up to 22kw) or “fast” (>22kw) chargers, will be installed in public parking areas in every single commune in Luxembourg. The goal is that these chargers should be no more than 300m away from a point of interest such as a shopping centre, school, tourist site, adminstrative offices etc.
Financing for the rollout will be by the energy companies, and at Deputy PM Schneider’s insistence, a common monitoring system, entitled “Smart Metering”, will allow holders of the standard recharge card to connect to any of the points, irrespective of who the energy provider actually is.
The schedule for the rollout of these recharge points anticipates that 25% of them will be in place by July 2017, 60% by July 2019 and the remainder by the end of 2020. Etienne Schneider told The Luxembourg Chronicle that it was very much the government’s policy to promote the use of electric vehicles, and that although there are no plans for the government to reintroduce financial incentives at point of sale, the relatively low fuel cost of approximately €2 per 100km compares very favourably with the typically €6-€10 for traditionally fuelled vehicles to cover the same distance.
Photo by John Chalmers (L-R: Minister of Sustainable Development and Infrastructure, François Bausch; Deputy Prime Minister, Minister for the Economy, Étienne Schneider)
