The EU is to support a four-year, €41.8 million partnership to accelerate the development and up-take of electric cars across Europe.
Green eMotion initiative will work in partnerships with forty two partners from a wide range of industry segments including utilities firms, electric car manufacturers, municipalities, universities and technology and research institutions
The aim of the initiative is to exchange and develop know-how and experience in selected regions within Europe as well as facilitate the market roll-out of electric vehicles in Europe.
European Commission Vice-President Siim Kallas, responsible for transport said: "Transport is current 96 per cent dependent on oil for its energy needs. This is totally unsustainable. The Transport 2050 Roadmap aims to break transport’s current oil dependency and allow mobility to grow.
Transport 2050 calls for a reduction of CO² from transport of at least 60 per cent by 2050. A major part of the measures designed to help the EU reach this goal is the major push to convert drivers in cities to electric vehicles, away from gas-guzzlers.
Kallas added: “The level of EU financial support for this e-motion project shows just how serious we are at EU level about achieving these goals. This is a project tackles some of the practical problems and real bottlenecks for cities and companies who want to bring electric vehicles to the market. It is exactly the kind of initiative where European co-operation adds huge value. This is a very promising initiative for the future."
Transport 2050 aims to half the number of conventionally fuelled cars in cities by 2030 and phase them out by 2050.
The four year long project ‘Green e motion’ is part of the European Green Cars Initiative, and will be funded under the Seventh Research and Development Framework Programme. It plans to compare the twelve on-going regional and national electromobility initiatives in eight different EU Member States and compare the different technology approaches.
The partners in the Green eMotion initiative are the industrial companies Alstom, Better Palce, Bosch, IBM, SAP and Siemens, the utilities firms; Dansk Energi, EDF, Endesa, Enel, ESB, Eurelectric, Iberdrola, RWE and PPC, the automobile manufacturers; BMW, Daimler, Micro-Vett, Renault and Nissan, the municipalities; Dublin, Cork, Copenhagen, Bornholm, Malmö, Malaga, Rome, Barcelona and Berlin, the universities and research institutions; Cartif Cidaut, DTU, ECN, ERSE, Imperial, IREC, LABEIN, and TCD and the technology institutions; DTI, FKA and TÜV Nord.
