Slightly more than 11% of the electric vehicles enrolled in Spain in the years 2018 and 2019 were in the municipality of Barcelona. And in the first four months of this 2020, paralyzed in mid-march by the pandemicone out of every four new vehicles electric propulsion that began to circulate in the Spanish territory he was domiciled in the Catalan capital.
The previous data concerning to think that, effectively, the city which two years ago was distinguished by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) as the european capital of urban mobility –leading a consortium that includes some of the main cities of the continent, and first brands of the automotive sector– is well plugged in to one of the expectations of the future in this matter. However, if we look at the absolute figures, it is observed that even in Barcelona, and what to say of its metropolitan area, the songs that the administrations come singing since many years ago in favor of this kind of vehicles come with a damper.
Leader in a league weak
The weight of the electric vehicle is scarce, but in Barcelona exceeds that of the rest of Spain
The electrical posed in the last complete census is available of the fleet of the city (something more than 827.000 units in 2018) a negligible 0,76% of the total. By summing the enrollment of 2019 and the first quarter of this year –about 6,000 in a whole– slightly more than 12,000 electric Barcelona don’t reach still to represent 1.5% of all registered vehicles in the municipality.
These numbers demonstrate the extent to which the strategies of promotion of the electric vehicle is not just to boot not even in an ecosystem are theoretically more favorable to these devices as is Barcelona, where it has proliferated exponentially another type of artifact, scooters, electrical and other VMP (vehicles, personal mobility), that waiting for a clear regulation and strict have already become an element of the urban landscape. Only the rise of electric motorcycles, linked in large part to the platforms rental, masks some of the statistics in which the weight of the passenger cars of these features is very small. To get an idea, in the census of 2018 only 1.185 of the nearly half a million passenger cars registered in Barcelona were of electric propulsion. In 2019 were enrolled in other 839, in addition to 2.663 motorcycles, 260 bikes and 27 vans electric. This year, even if a small miracle would retrieve minimally the pace of enrollment, the numbers will be, certainly, significantly lower than those of the previous year.
The high sale prices, the still limited autonomy of this type of vehicle, the slowness with which is woven a strong network of electrolineras and the failure of the tax incentives explained that the mobile power to grow more slowly than could have been anticipated a few years ago.
The brakes
The price, the autonomy low, and the failure of charging points and tax incentives
In 2019 were enrolled in Spain, more than 1.825.000 vehicles (55% of them petrol), a figure slightly lower than the 2018 but that was, after that year, the second-best since the crisis started in 2008 doubled the curve (in 2007 had been enrolled in all of Spain 2.6 million vehicles). Of these more than 1.8 million enrollments in the past year, the electric meant only 1.8%. In the whole of Catalunya, the fee was equal to 2.6%. In the Barcelona of the restrictions on the car and the bike, of 8.6%. And what about in the Metropolitan Area? Without counting the capital, just 280 electric vehicles, that is, 0.66% of the total of this field (Barcelona margin).
All these figures confirm that, in the field of electric mobility, the Catalan capital is going ahead a few miles. But, even so, the road ahead is still very long. In fact it is almost all the way forward. More data that provide arguments to this claim: the diesel, the maligned diesel pareced not have a place in a future of cities decontaminated, continues to retain a presence in the recent statistics of enrolment higher than that of the electric. So, last year still recorded in Barcelona 7.061 vehicles diesel for only 3.881 electrical. The 2020 seemed to be marking a clear change of tendency, as in the first quarter of this year the number of registrations of electric vehicles in Barcelona (2.072) exceeded for the first time the unit equipped with a diesel engine, something unthinkable yet in the whole of Spain, where the proportion in that first third of the 2020 summit was almost 15 to 1 in favor of the diesel.
In the absence of stimuli –and competitive prices–to the particular give the jump to the electric vehicle, the Administration has set for itself almost obliged to bet for this technology. In the case of the Barcelona city Council is yet to develop the greater part of the extent of government adopted in 2018, which defined a strategy for electric mobility at the horizon of 2024. For that year, if they meet the objectives set, the 80% of the mobile fleet municipal service (cleaning, waste collection, water cycle system, lighting and the public company BSM) will be driven by electrical energy, like a hundred bus Transports Metropolitans de Barcelona, and 800 taxis.
The same plan states that for those dates through the streets of the city to circulate to 24,000 passenger cars and 24,000 motorcycles electric, which forces us to multiply the number of recharging points for public and free of charge, that is now below 500.
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