Brussels, 01/02/2016 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 20 January, the Commissioner for Transport, Violeta Bulc, said that the expansion in electric transport would help boost innovation, generate job creation and make the transport sector an undisputed player in the single digital market. Speaking at the Smart Cities 2016 conference on cities and smart transport, the Commissioner also explained that this expansion in electric transport would help combat climate change.
The statements were made during the launch of the EV4SCC platform, which brings together the cities and regions, as well as the industrial sector, in view of examining the development of efficient urban electric transport. They come at the beginning of the New Mobility Services initiative.
The latter project comes to an end in May this year. It seeks to enable public and private transport providers to develop and test innovative online ticketing models together, as well as urban journey planning and permanent user information systems. In this connection, participants will focus on four different areas: existing technology and technical barriers, mobility services fragmentation, governance and the lack of communication between the different actors and data creation and breakdown.
Commissioner Bulc has made intelligent transport systems and the digitalisation of transport into her warhorse (see EUROPE 11404). It is true that the electric transport sector together is experiencing a sudden impetus that is likely to be long lasting. In addition to the cities, initiatives for tracing the transnational corridors are beginning to take shape (see EUROPE 11436) and MEPs such as Dominique Riquet (ALDE, France) and Bas Eickhout (Greens/EFA, Netherlands) are calling for an ambitious European policy to be developed in this domain.
Speaking at a conference of the European Parliament on clean transport on Wednesday 27 January, Michel Derdevet, the secretary-general of the Électricité Réseau Distribution France (ERDF), explained: “The European network of electric terminals would only cost €450 million much less than the budget allocated to certain macro-regions”. He believes that the sector is confronting the same challenges as thermic cars did at the beginning of the last century: lack of refuelling infrastructure. This point of view appears to be shared by Matthias Müller, the head of the Volkswagen group. Last Monday, the latter made a robust appeal for infrastructure to be developed across Europe, as well as a legislative framework that is appropriately adapted to ensuring expansion in the electric sector. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)