It was just yesterday that we told you about Better Place taking its electric car battery switching model to Australia (see article) and now the company has received European funding too.
The European Commission has selected the Greening European Transportation Infrastructure for Electric Vehicles eMobility project led by Better Place to be the first project to be funded to date under the Directorate-General for Mobility and Transport’s new decarbonisation infrastructure category. A total of €4.95million has been awarded to the €9.9million project.
As part of the project, a multi-transport mode network will be analysed, tested and deployed using current road infrastructure and railways; as well as an electric car charging network of battery switch stations and charge spots powered by renewable energy.
In addition, it is hoped it will serve as a technology roadmap for a pan-European electric car network that can decarbonise the grid.
Among the parts of the project are: the deployment of the first battery switch stations in Europe in Copenhagen and Amsterdam; planning for a network of battery switch stations across Western Europe; an inter-modal pilot for mobility services across electric cars and trains in Denmark; and a report on the conditions needed to accelerate the deployment of an open access electric car infrastructure.
So far the project has been endorsed by Denmark, the Netherlands, Austria, Spain, Belgium and Luxembourg with the consortium including FCC Construccion SA of Spain; Verbund AG of Austria; the City of Copenhagen; Elia System Operator S.A. of Belgium; Technical University of Denmark; the City of Amsterdam; Public Research Center Henri Tudor of Luxembourg; and DSB Kommerciel of Denmark.
