Looking for EVs - From Germany to Sweden

Germany - We saw 2 or 3 Teslas on the autobahn, but no other Premium EVs. Or PHEVs, for that matter. 

In Berlin, a few Nissan Leaf and VW were visible, just like 1 Kona EV, 1 VW e-Up! and 1 Smart EV. Oh, and 1 Opel Ampera, that still hadn't migrated to other pastures. Funny enough, we haven't spotted any Renault Zoe, or even BMW i3, that seemed so common on other visits to the city.

So. Many. Cars. In Germany. It will be a titanic task to change this fleet into EVs. 

Sweden - We didn't had to look for them, because they showed regularly on the road, though without with the frequency we see in Norway, where they pop up everywhere, but nevertheless, Sweden is getting there.

Plenty of Teslas, all three nameplates, but also Kia Niro PHEV/EV, Nissan Leaf, e-NV200, BMW i3...You name it.

Looking for EVs - From Slovenia to Poland

Fast-Chargers on highways: A must.

Slovenia - One of the good things about Slovenia is the existence of fast-chargers on the highway service stations, something that some countries with higher plugin shares tend to forget and it is essential to make longer trips more comfortable.

On the local EV fauna, we saw 1 Nissan Leaf, 1 Renault Zoe and 1 Citroen C-Zero. Oh, and a VW Golf GTE with Dutch license plates (they do like to travel abroad, don't they?).

It felt like a tourist (and EV) friendly place, and local radios weren't bad either, with the news being broadcasted in Slovenian, English and German (?!?).

3 EVs in Budapest

Hungary - We saw 2 Nissan Leaf and 1 Opel Ampera on the countryside, but it was on the fancy area of Budapest (Buda), that we saw an EV Bonanza: countless Leaf, i3's, e-Golf...plus 2 e-Up!, 2 e-NV200, 1 Smart EV, 1 Kia Soul EV, 1 Fiat 500e(!!!)...With plenty of PHEVs too, with the Opel Ampera everywhere, plus a few Prius PHEV and Outlander PHEV for good measure.

Despite this EV density, we saw few Teslas, 2 Model X and 1 Model S, while other Luxury EVs were completely absent. Are the local rich people averse to EVs?

Slovakia - We saw a few Toyota hybrids and 1 Outlander PHEV, otherwise...nothing much going on.

One Opel Ampera that must have migrated from Germany/Netherlands to Hungary...

Czech Republic - See Slovakia. Same story, but without the Outlander. Good radios, though, with Country Music radio and CAS Rock, a brilliant Rock radio.

Poland - We saw a couple of Nissan Leafs, 1 BMW i3, 1 Model S and...that was all folks.

Looking for EVs - From Portugal to Italy

This year, on our post-summer road to Sweden, instead of doing the shortest way there (PT-ES-FR-BE-NL-DE-DK-SE), we decided to make a small (big) detour, and followed the Mediterranean Sea until Italy, then we went through Italy on out way to Budapest, then headed north to Wroclaw, Poland, to visit some friends, and finally went on our way to Sweden.

So i decided to check out how the EV fauna looked like along the way:

Portugal - After leaving Aveiro and passing by one Nissan Leaf and a Renault Zoe in the suburbs, i only saw a new EV in Viseu, in this case, a BMW i3, something that confirmed my assumption that electric cars are still an urban thing;

ICE-ing: Still a plague in many places

Spain - Saw one Renault Zoe in Salamanca and...nothing else until Madrid. Spain's wide open spaces are an EV desert.

In Madrid, EVs returned, with 2 Zoes and 1 BMW i3, all company cars. 

After leaving Spain's capital, we returned to the EV desert, until getting close to Barcelona, not only the landscape looks different, and EVs start to pop up left and right, with the first Teslas starting showing up, one Model S, two Model S, one Model 3...

In Barcelona there are plenty of EVs, with several Nissan e-NV200 vans, Renault Zoes, Tesla Model S, BMW i3, Hyundai Kona EV...

Car-sharing is also relevant, while local taxis and police cars are hybrid Toyota Prius, it's like this city lives in a different universe than the rest of Spain!

Citroen e-Mehari: Maybe the most French of all French EVs...

France - Crossing Southern France highways, both Teslas (2 Model S, 1 Model 3) and PHEVs (2 Outlander PHEV, 1 Mini Countryman PHEV) were possible to be seen, but when we arrived to the Nice and Cannes area, we noticed once again that urban areas continue to be BEV's natural habitat: there we saw 4 Renault Zoe, a couple of Twizy (Twizzies?), one Peugeot iOn, one Kona EV and the e-Mehari, seen above. 

Funny enough, in this area, apart from a Model S, we saw no Luxury EV around, but we did saw some vintage cars, one Lanborghini, a couple of Ferraris...

#poor people drive Teslas

In Monaco, the most common EV was the Renault Twizy, with several units of the tiny two seater fighting space with countless scooters, while other small electric cars were also popular (4 Smart EV, 2 Zoe, 2 BMW i3...), but it seemed as larger the EV is, the less common it becomes (2 VW e-Golf, 1 Peugeot Partner EV van and 1 Tesla Model X).

Funny enough, we say more Maybach (2), than Teslas (the Model X).

As a final note, the parking lots have so much diversity, that deserved a post of their own. But because we don't have time, look at the picture above...

Italy - Not a lot to talk about, as the low EV share is visible by its absence on Italian roads, we saw just one Panamera PHEV (i think it was the PHEV version, we could only see for a few seconds, before disappearing in the horizon...), one VW Passat GTE (with Dutch license place, so it doesn't count), and a Model 3.

The best thing road tripping Italy was actually listening to Virgin Radio, airing some of the best classic rock tracks on Earth, ideal for the kind of travelling we were doing.

Road Trip - Zoomin' in the USA (3/3)

Day 11 – Running around New Bedford, MA

After visiting relatives and taking coffee close by, I found two guys staring at the car.

-          It’s electric, isn’t it?

-          Yes, but this one has a gas range extender

-          Really? How does that work?

(Short explanation)

-          170 horsepower? Nice…How much does it cost?

-          Around 40.000USD

-          I had seen one before in New Jersey…Looks cool!

New Bedford was a welcome surprise, with a number of slow chargers within the city limits and EV’s zooming around, two Chevrolet Volt II and three Nissan Leaf, one of them belonging to the town hall. No Teslas though. Nevertheless, it was the first place in the US where I felt having an EV wasn’t something alien to the locals.

Day 12 – Back from New Bedford, MA to Waterbury, CT

The largest travel of this road trip, with 158 miles (255 kms), it would surely only be achieved using the range extender, but nevertheless I wanted to try and do it all in electric mode, so I stopped for a few minutes at the Fast Charger in Middletown, but not much was added, as the top 20% of the battery takes too long to charge.

So, with 125 miles to go, after a I95 Freeway trip with A/C on, the last 15 miles were made using the gas engine.

Already in Waterbury, I noticed that the car in gas mode behaves like a regular hybrid, once the batteries have a minimum charge from regenerative breaking, it returns for a few seconds to electric mode.

 Day 13 – Preparing for the comeback

In a day spent packing and preparing the comeback, I found one lady in a Prius on the Dunkin Donuts parking lot, which said to me:

-          You’ve got a funky little BMW!

-          Thanks, it’s electric!

-          Really? (Ear-to-ear smile)

-          Yes, want to check it?

-          Sure!

(She came over and I explained it how it worked and the main features)

-          You must have a lot of people asking for the car, right?

-          Yeah, sometimes…

-          Great little car, I have to tell my husband about it!

Day 14 – Waterbury, CT to Manhattan, New York

Saving the best for last, this was the trip I enjoyed most the BMW i3. The last part of the 90 miles was done in the middle of the New York traffic, and in this environment the German hatchback excels, with its agile handling and swift lane changes, while leaving other vehicles in the dust in red lights.

After leaving the car, it was time for the Likes and Dislikes of the BMW i3:

Likes

-          Striking Looks. I already loved the detailed design of the car, completely different from everything else on the road, with a character that reminded me something between Star Wars and an angry puppy. What I didn’t expected was that its design became a such a magnet, drawing attention everywhere it went.  

-          Supple ride/Small on the outside, big on the inside. It is a small car, but it doesn’t feel like it on the inside. Because the battery pack is flat on the floor, the interior space is maximized and with the help of the high ceiling and large windows, you do not feel claustrophobic. With a surprisingly supple ride, you only realize the small size of the car when parking or changing direction.

-          Power. While it’s not Tesla-fast off the line, it builds up speed like few hatchbacks can and feels like it can pull an airplane.

-          Range extender. Range anxiety? What range anxiety? When the model came out a few years ago, I wasn’t really in favor of the Rex thing, but after trying it, I have concluded that it allows you to run more miles in electric mode than if you hadn’t, as sometimes you would have to limit yourself to the electric range of your BEV. Not in this case, with an average 120/130 miles electric range and fast charging availability, it does whatever other 30-something kWh battery EVs do AND you do not have to worry if you only have 15% battery charge, because you always have the Rex safety net to pull you out of critical situations. As an example, of the 800 miles (1.300 kms) I did in a week and a half, only around 30 were made in gas mode. Not bad, eh?

Dislikes

-          Small Size (For US roads). In Europe this is not an issue, as similar-sized superminis abound, but in US roads it feels rather small next to giant Trucks, Pick-ups and SUVs, and it might be one of the reasons why the electric BMW hasn’t catched on in the USA as it did in Europe.

-          iDrive. At first it was really unnerving working with the button-based BMW multimedia system, now that we are used to use touchscreens in everything, from cell phones to cars. The large number of menus and submenus are not intuitive and takes time getting used to it and even then, it was more distractive than the multimedia system on the Nissan Leaf.

-          Price. It is expensive regarding its size, even considering it has a Premium badge. Still. I feel tempted to buy one…

Road Trip - Zoomin' in the USA (2/3)

Day 5 – Switching cars and heading to Waterbury, Connecticut

After switching cars in the morning, leaving the Nissan Leaf and picking up the blue BMW i3 Rex, we prepared the trip to Connecticut, as there would be more than one car travelling, the smaller i3 would be the cargo van, so we filled it with three suitcases and other smaller bags.

After lunch, the battery was again charged and it showed a scarcely believable 150 miles (240 kms) electric range! I hadn’t really driven the car a lot, so I was really doubtful of these numbers, but because the trip was only 105 miles (170 kms), I thought it could be possible to reach Waterbury only in electric mode, if it wasn’t, there wouldn’t be many miles running on gas, I thought.

And off we went, profiting from the mild temperatures (16ºC / 60ºF) we left the A/C switched off and the first miles confirmed the different character the BMW i3, it had heavier steering and a sportier stance, it felt even smaller next to those 18 wheelers on the Freeway and the iDrive multimedia system was starting to get on my nerves, as the menus and button settings were less intuitive than the touchscreen system of the Leaf.

But those thoughts soon passed as we joined the New York congested traffic, where the handy-size, instant torque and kart-like drive of the i3 helped to explore the small spaces left in the compact traffic.

Soon after the George Washington bridge, a silver Mercedes on our right side started honking at us, to our surprise he was happily looking at the car and giving us thumbs up on it…

“Great Car!” – He said.

It was the first (But not the last) time we saw the star-like attraction that the little i3 creates.

After a couple of scares (Was it just me or are NY drivers nuts?) and a lot of stop and go traffic, the I95 finally was free of traffic and we reached cruise speed, where the i3 proved to be quite stable and powerful, even at speeds that could have been well above the legal limit…

Stopping midway for some refreshments, a small kid with his parent pointed at the car and said: “Uau, that thing looks like a toy car…Cool!!!”

Reaching close to our destination, we made a wrong turn and we tried another big plus of the car, a ridiculously small turning radius, basically we just turned the steering wheel completely and…Voilá! We had switched to the other direction without any other maneuver.

We arrived home and in fact the car not only did the whole trip in electric mode, but after 105 miles, most of it in highway speeds and some occasional A/C use towards the end of the trip, it still had 22 miles to spare.

Days 6, 7, 8 – Running around Connecticut

During these days visiting friends and family, the BMW i3 was a big attraction, with plenty of reactions:

1.       What car is that? I never saw this BMW…It’s electric? Really? I didn’t knew BMW made EV’s…

2.       Wow, this thing can go! Mom, you should get one of these! (Father’s answer: “Yeah, but she likes to speed, with a thing like this, she would get speeding tickets everyday”)

3.       Mmm…This is great as a commuter car.

4.       This BMW is electric? What is the range?

5.       Is there an electric minivan? (Answer: There’s the Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid, has 30 miles electric range on top of the gas range). Nice…

The fact is that around Connecticut I didn’t saw a lot of EV’s, besides the usual Teslas (Around two per day), I only saw three Chevrolet Volt (One Gen 1 and two Gen 2), and…That’s it.

Where are all the Nissan Leaf? Do they only exist in California? – I thought.

In this state the people mindset regarding EV’s isn’t much different from New Jersey, they divide electric cars in two categories, the first is Tesla, mentioning the brand coolness and the Autopilot as more important than the fact that they are electric. All other EV’s fall in a second category, where they are pictured as slow, low range and expensive.

The good thing of the BMW i3 is that is shatters two of the three previous preconceptions. Now the price it’s a different story… People still correlate price with size, so the little i3 suffers in that regard.

Regarding infrastructure, I took the opportunity to try a free 22 kW charger in New Haven, while I noticed that CCS fast chargers had a better coverage (If not perfect) in CT than Chademo, which is virtually nonexistent in the state.

On the last night, after having dinner at some friends house, we arrived at the car and we saw three teens staring at the BMW from close.

I switched on the car presence lights and the kids gave a step back, looking at us:

-          Is it yours? It’s so cool!...

After making a small introduction to the car, they were surprised by the fact that it was electric and by the pick-up truck-like doors.

When I started the car and started moving, one of them said:

-          Hey, it doesn’t make a sound! Awesome…

That night we had a couple with us in the back seat and he was 1,9 meters (Six foot two), despite this, he was surprisingly ok in the back, not only in height (Hey, I didn’t hit the floor!), but also on knee space.

The i3 doesn’t stop surprising…Hell, even the iDrive system started to make sense!

  

Day 9 – Waterbury, CT to Westerly, Rhode Island

One would think an 85 mile trip would be an easy thing for the i3, right? And despite a cold (7ºC / 45ºF), rainy night, that remembered the worst of winter in Lisbon, it actually was a fairly easy thing to do with the Bimmer, despite being light and Rear Wheel Drive, it didn’t had the smallest sign of aquaplaning, behaving on the highway like a “grownup BMW” in these gruesome conditions.

Because the car wasn’t fully charged and the A/C was permanently on, the last 10 miles were done using the range extender, inside the car the only difference was a hum coming from the back and a few vibrations, not much different from a regular gas car, but noticeable in the previously serene i3 loft.

Day 10 – Westerly, RI to New Bedford, Massachusetts

A 70 mile trip through some really scenic back roads of Rhode Island, with a stop in posh Newport, which proved to be an EV friendly place, where I saw my first Chevrolet Bolt, along with two Tesla and a Cadillac ELR (Beautiful car, BTW).

After arriving to the car in Newport, ready to resume the trip, the driver on my right said:

-          New Jersey nameplate? That is a looong way for an electric car!

He got even more amazed when I told him the final destination was Massachusetts…

Road Trip – Zoomin’ in the USA (1/3)

The idea for this series of articles came one night while discussing with Zach of CleanTechnica my  trip to the Northeast of the USA to visit relatives, at the time he asked me:

Z – So, are you going to rent an EV while you are there?

J -  Yeah, i thought about it, but it is really expensive, around twice as much as a regular Ford Focus rental…

Z – Really? Let me see if I can help you with that…

And so he did, after pulling some strings and connecting to the right people, Zach helped me to have not one, but two EV’s for my two week stay in the US, a red Nissan Leaf 30 kWh for the first days, followed by a blue BMW i3 Rex with the new 33 kWh battery for the remainder of the journey.

But before I start, I want to signal my deepest appreciation to the people of Nissan USA and BMW USA, for the dedication, professionalism and sympathy in the vehicle delivery, assistance and pick up process, you rock!

Day 1 – Arrival to JFK airport and heading to Newark, New Jersey

After a complicated arrival, complete with border control hold ups (Apparently, I was mistaken by another person with a criminal record in the US…), we got to the scheduled place with only three hours delay to pick up our top of the range Nissan Leaf.

Driving the Leaf was kind like meeting an old friend, you haven’t met him for a while, but you know how it all works, you know what to expect, including the annoying foot brake.

The big surprise (To me, at least, used to the 24kWh version) was the increased range of the thing, showing 101 miles in the guess-o-meter with 77% charge, equaling to some 130 miles/210 kms with a full charge.

210 kms! To have that kind of range on the 24 kWh units, I would have to go downhill AND have tailwind helping me out…

Day 2 – Running around Newark, NJ

Full day running around the whereabouts of Newark, visiting friends and family, and shopping. Looots of shopping! (Hey, it’s New Jersey, what else would you do?) I took the opportunity to escape the Stores Via Sacra and try out the local charging infrastructure.

And it was then that I realized how fortunate we are in Portugal for having an ATM-like system of charging cards, where you can have an “A” charging card, but regardless of that you can use it in the “B” charging network, or “C”, or…whatever network that provides electricity for your car.

After all, for the end buyer, what you want is to charge your car, regardless of whoever does it, right?

Well, not in New Jersey. I had a Chargepoint card, but turns out, the closest Fast Charging station belonged to EVGo, which actually allowed for other customers to charge, as long as they had a valid credit card (Check!) and a valid local telephone number (What?!? Why?!?!).

I then understood the frustration of my German friends, which carry a bunch of charging cards, one for each company…

So, no deal there, which left me no solution but to ask my temporary host to do an overnight charge at home, at 110 Volts.

One thing that struck me on the first full day in the US, was that everything was super-sized regarding Europe.

A small drink in the US is a medium-sized choice in Europe and the same thing happens regarding cars, with seemingly half the houses in suburban Newark having a big pick-up truck and a seven-seater SUV on the garage entry, my Nissan Leaf didn’t look like the family car it is Europe, but something more…Compact.

Now I understand why the Leaf is classified as “Compact Car” in the land of Uncle Sam.

Day 3 and 4 – Catching the subway to New York

After the overnight charge, the 100% mark was achieved, just in time to commute to the subway station with a full charge, with the guess-o-meter recording 130 miles (210 kms in metrical speak), which meant I had made the same energy consumption that the car had before coming to my hands, beating the EPA range in a sizeable manner, and I wasn’t even hypermiling, no ECO mode, using (Occasionally) A/C in a city / highway drive mix…Not bad. Not bad at all…

Sure, the 250 kms range (155 miles) announced by the NEDC were still a bit far off, but then again, I didn’t had the pink unicorns that help out EV’s doing the European testings…

Or maybe I’m just being mean, if you always run in ECO mode, never use Air Conditioner and drive like a nun, maybe, just maybe, you can reach the announced 250 kms range.

And what about EV’s? Did you saw a lot of them running around? – You may ask.

Actually I thought I would see more, apart from the random Tesla (Mostly Model S), we really needed to have an eagle eye to spot them, I saw a white BMW i3 (Being driven by an attractive 30-year old girl, BTW), one Second Generation Chevrolet Volt and…That’s it.

Except for Tesla, that has a special aura that surpasses the fact that it is electric (Auto Pilot, fast acceleration, etc), this area is not especially EV-friendly, including New York, that also disappointed a bit when it came to spot EV’s.

I guess it will be up to the Tesla Pick-Up Truck to finally win the Regular Joe mindset into EV’s. Hurry up with that one, Tesla…

At the end of Day 4 and with the delivery of the Nissan Leaf scheduled for the next day, it was time to do a list of Likes and Dislikes of the Nissan model:

Likes

-          Range! With over 100 miles range it was really easy to use it on urban environment, with no sign of range anxiety, so I could drive it pretty much anywhere in the NJ area without looking at the guess-o-meter every two minutes or monitoring my driving style;

-          Ease of use, maybe because I am most used to it, or because it is a straightforward car to drive, the fact is that it was really intuitive to drive it, with easy to use multimedia system and no major secrets. It just works how we want it, and that’s a big plus for people new to electric vehicles;

-          Family friendly vehicle. Space is not an issue in the car, be it in the front, at the rear seat or in the trunk. And we really used it, after all, there was a time when we were five in the car and the trunk had plenty of shopping bags…

Dislikes

-          Foot Brake! It is sooo annoying and clunky, if there is one feature I would like to change for the upcoming Leaf, is that Nissan finally ended the foot brake nonsense and made a regular Parking button, like regular EV’s have. I mean, for a car designed to look the 21^st Century future, the foot brake seems like a 19th Century relic!

-          Cable storage. Sure, the trunk had no problems swallowing shopping bags, but should we use the full capacity of the trunk, we would have to remove the cable storage suitcase from the side and place it…Somewhere. This is not the ideal solution, BMW solved it in the i3 by placing it in the small front trunk. I think Nissan could have found a better place to store the cables. Maybe in the next Leaf?

Looking for EV's - Hong Kong and Macau

Tesla Model X in the Hong Kong narrow streets

HONG KONG

Crossing the border from Shenzhen into Hong Kong is like leaving the alternate dimension that is the Chinese EV Market, but stepping into another that is still not quite ours, if in the other side of the border, all you saw were BYD cars, e6, Qin, Tang...Now we seemed to have crossed into some Tesla-addict reality, where Teslas were everywhere.

I mean, literally Everywhere. And not just the older Model S, even the recently arrived to HK Model X (P90D for the most part) was pretty common, this surprising landscape made me even increase significantly my estimates for Tesla deliveries in the territory, as not even Oslo has so many Teslas per square kilometer. 

Well, if there are so many Teslas coming from posh Mid-Town to crowd the downtown area, then the BMW i3 will surely be also common, right?

Not really, i only saw three units, which is kind of a paradox, if the hard-to-park Tesla yachts are a common sight in the crowded streets of the Territory, the Ideal-for-the-City-but-Still-Posh BMW i3 is something of a rarity. Go figure peoples tastes, right?

Beyond these two models, there wasn't much more to talk about, i saw a couple of Nissan Leaf and a Renault Fluence ZE(!). Yes, the French-Korean sedan still zooms the local streets which, considering the enormous amount of Teslas around, shouldn't be a surprise, as local buyers seem to have mastered the fine art of parking everywhere, almost on top of each other...  


MACAU

I was expecting to see a similar picture in the former Portuguese concession as in Hong Kong, with plenty of Tesla and a couple of other EV's, just to make the thing a little more interesting.

Not really, despite spotting two EV's, one Nissan Leaf on the road and a Nissan e-Evalia charging at a company parking lot, the main headlines were the complete absence of Teslas.

Considering the amount of Maserati, Bentley and other exotica running around the Casino area, it was a bit disconcerting that you saw no Teslas.

Were Teslas been hiding, knowing i was in the neighborhood? Was there a Tesla concentration on the other side of the territory that i just missed? Who knows.

One thing is for sure, with so much money being made (Lost?) at the local Casinos, one would expect Tesla would grab some of those millionaires and sold them a couple of units... 

Looking for EV's - Mainland China (Shanghai and Shenzhen)

  

Roewe 550

During my stay in China to see the gigantic Auto Shanghai motorshow, i had the chance to witness the popularity of plug-ins in the busy streets of Shanghai, and also something that we do not get to understand looking at sales at national level:

The EV Scene varies a lot in China, according to which city you are.

If you are in Beijing, BAIC (Aka Beijing Auto) is the most popular, in Shanghai it is SAIC (Shanghai Auto), while down in the South, BYD rules supreme...

BYD Qin in Shanghai

SHANGHAI

Looking at the Shanghai streets, the most popular plug-in is the local SAIC Roewe 550 PHEV, also known as e550, but i saw also a surprising number of BYD Qin, all PHEV, all in white colour.

These two were the most common EV's in the street, which together with the random BYD Tang (In white, or course, what's with Shanghai BYD buyers and the white colour?!?), made up for 90% of plug-ins seen.

Besides these, i saw one BAIC EU260 (Guess what? In White) and a couple of Teslas (Two Model S and one Model X), these last ones zooming around the Pudong Financial District.

SHENZHEN

This is home of BYD Headquarters and it shows. In this sort of Chinese "Sillicon Valley" (Even the local Airport is a fine work of Architecture), the only plug-ins you see are from the local automaker, i dare to say that half of all taxis in the city are BYD e6, many of them with battered interiors but with their electric range in the 200/300 kms and..."Spirited" drivers.

Also, around one in three buses were electric, but funny enough, not all of them were of the BYD variety. 

While there, i had the opportunity to visit the BYD HQ, where besides the integrated vision they have on carbon-free energy and mobility, i was struck by something i had only seen in Norway: A dedicated parking lot where EVERY parking space was equipped with a charger.

How is that for an employee benefit?

Looking for EV's - Oslo, Norway

Having spent these last days in Oslo, i can assert that this is the place where the title of this tag of articles makes less sense, because EV's were...Everywhere.

Specialists have crowned Oslo as the EV Capital of the World, and rightly so, because the typical Tron-like zoom is already part of the sound-landscape of the city, sure, the diesel-clattering is more common still, but it was also relatively easy to find lines of two or three electric cars on the road.

But first things first, before getting to Oslo, one must leave the airport and travel between the local airport and the city itself, it is a 20 to 30 minutes trip on the highway, where one can see a major difference between the first kilometers, where electric cars were rarer and composed mainly by Tesla Model S, Nissan Leaf and VW e-Golf, and the final kilometers, closer to the urban toll, where EV's are not only more common and diverse, but you start to see the I-Miev triplets, among other small cars. 

There i realized my first Oslo lesson...

Lesson Number One - Many drivers drive EV to avoid Urban Toll.

At 660.000 inhabitants, Oslo is not one of that large Metropolis with high rises and congested streets, here the vibe is more relaxed and the large amount of regular hybrids (More popular than plug-ins) and EV's zooming around just add to that feeling.

Plug-in owners might start to stress when they want to park and charge at the same time, while there are parking lots with multiple charging plugs, like the one pictured above, the city downtown hasn't got that many side way charging, and the places that had them, were always full.

This is probably an impossible equation to solve, but the city center, which was the only place where there was high vehicle density and stop-and-go traffic, there is little possibility to charge there.

Lesson Number Two - Charging is more needed where there is more traffic density. 

Lesson Number Two B - Utility companies have a good opportunity here, paid charging at city centers are a guarantee of high rotation and continuous revenue.

But for drivers that don't mind walking a few minutes, just outside the city center there are a number of parking lots with EVSE, with the most interesting of them being the one pictured above, close to the City Harbour, which has some 20 to 30 charging spots to charge, with the most interesting bit being the fact that ICE vehicles are not allowed to go into this parking lot.

At the time of the visit, in the middle of the afternoon, the parking was half full, which meant some 10/15 EV's charging at once in the same place and no gas car in sight...

Never like then i felt the EV future so close.

Looking For EV's - Spain (Barcelona)

 

Toyota Prius taxis are everywhere...

The first thing that struck me when I arrived at the Airport was the large amount of Toyota Prius taxis, I know they are not plug-ins and they shouldn’t be on this post, but it was hard to escape the fact that some 25% of all taxis were Priuses (Prii? What’s the name for a group of Prius?), with this model representing an even larger percentage of taxis in the Old Town.

I knew the Toyota Prius was a popular choice for taxi fleets in Spain, but in Barcelona they have a high point, and it’s not only taxis, the Police also uses them.

...I mean, EVERYWHERE

 Third Generation (The one above) represent the largest part of them, but there’s also some Second Generation units running around, as well as the seven seater Prius + / V.

First and Fourth Generations are a rarity, I saw one of each but both were from private owners.

Moving on to actual EV’s, the most visible were fleet units, as with the City-owned Piaggio EV’s, working as garbage trucks in the narrow Ramblas of the Old Town…

Piaggio EV mini-garbage trucks

 …Or the rental Renault Twizzies, which are one of the best ways to know the town, not only they feel at ease in the (many times) clogged streets of Barcelona, but they are also a blast to drive, especially once you incorporate the vacations-mode and let yourself go from every day rational thinking, as this is probably one of the most suited vehicles to use during the always short summer vacations periods.

33ºC, sun & beaches nearby: The ideal place for a Twizy 

Back to more mainstream EV’s, there weren’t that many zooming around, I counted one Renault Zoe, one BMW i3 and two Nissan Leaf’s, one of them being a taxi.

These days spent here helped me to understand why the Spanish EV Market has such high share of LCV’s and fleet deals, it seems that private buyers are still unaware / reluctant to jump into the EV Bandwagon, whereas fleet buyers, both public and private, are more open to it, not only on light vehicles, but also regarding buses, as an important percentage of them were either hybrid or running on Natural Gas.

A final note for a Solar Hybrid Catamaran boat that makes small cruise trips along the Barcelona Coast, the lack of engine noise during the trip makes the whole experience much more pleasant and inviting, making me wonder if the next step for transport electrification won’t happen in boats…