The car market is increasingly moving towards electricity. This emerged from the meeting promoted in Milan by Forum Automotive, especially in the light of new regulations, even more restrictive after the dieselgate scandal, on CO2 emissions: a crackdown that came into force on 1 September for all new cars, wanted by the EU to eliminate the enormous discrepancy recorded between the diesel emissions values calculated in laboratory tests and those measured once on the road.
Meanwhile, the electric takes off. In fact, many car manufacturers, also by virtue of even more stringent regulation on combustion models, have made electric cars or hybrid vehicles their first strategy for the immediate future: to achieve the CO2 targets set for 2021 by the standards international, builders will have to more than double the current annual rate of reduction.
At the head of the market among the manufacturers there is always Tesla, while BMW is entering the European market strongly but above all, as is well known, it is China, which leads the market for electric cars soldVehicles with an electric range of 2017 million kilometers were sold in Greater China in Q22,5 2013, more than double that of all of Europe, according to analysis by Alix Partners for Forum Automotive. Even among the manufacturers, the Chinese ones come immediately after Tesla, with five manufacturers in the top ten: BYD, BAIC, Geely, Zhidou and Jianghuai. The market share of the electric car, worldwide, increased sixfold from 2017 to 0,21, going from 1,2% to 260% and exceeding XNUMX vehicles sold.
He was also present at the event Francesco Venturini, global director of Enel e-Solutions which just yesterday, as part of the Eva + project, co-financed by the EU, inaugurated the fast charging station at the IP distributor in Cormano, near Milan, and which today announced that it has started installing 10 stations "vehicle-to-grid" (V2G) charging stations of 10 kW each, for a pilot project of V2G hubs in the Netherlands launched by NewMotion. The project follows V2G technology is the one that allows unused vehicles connected to columns to recharge but also to supply energy to the national grid in exchange, on demand.
"An important change is underway - said Venturini, who in mid-November will present Enel's new national plan for 12 charging stations throughout the country -, we believe in it and we are ready to do our part, which is to offer the necessary infrastructure. The Government is supporting this trend but we don't need incentives: we are taking an industrial risk having assessed the opportunity”.
In fact, having taken a path, which is that of renewable energies and electric mobility, there is no turning back: "Large investments have been made - Venturini said -, in our industry we invest 20 years on, so even if some strategies change, as is happening in the US with Trump, this will not stop a process that is already planned and already underway". A process that closely links the energy market to that of the automobile: “Thanks to renewables – explained the manager of Enel -, which today produce 5-10% of global energy but which are destined to grow, and energy efficiency, which allows us to consume less and better, we will be able to support electric mobility. Today we need less energy and we produce it from different and less polluting sources: savings can be used to charge cars”.
The theme now, as emerged several times during the discussions in Milan with the automotive associations and which was also attended by the former Environment Minister Corrado Clini, is that of infrastructure: “They must be made widespread and we are committed to this. Not only for electric cars but also for LNG, for example. China has already thought of a model, the so-called Global Energy Interconnection, to better connect networks and better distribute energy”.
As for its production, Venturini confirmed that the essential path according to Enel is that of renewables: “Nuclear power is not the way, it takes 10-15 years to build a power plant, with costs of up to 20 billion euros. On the other hand, building a photovoltaic system from scratch costs less than running an existing coal-fired system. At the moment it is also economically convenient to focus on renewable energy sources”.
