With a view to sustained mobility, the Government will also present this month the first electric car supply network with a national dimension in Europe, a project that has been developed by a group created at the Ministry of Economy and Innovation and that wants rely on private partners and municipalities.
The use of electric cars was yesterday the theme of one of the conferences held within the scope of the 4th Innovation Days, which will take place at FIL until tomorrow, June 20, bringing together a series of players in the sector, including public entities, associations and technology manufacturers Portuguese, showing that this is an area where there is interest and Portuguese know-how.
Francisca Duarte Pacheco, from the Ministry of Economy and Innovation, lifted a bit of the veil of the electric car supply network project that the Government will formally present on the 29th, outlining the objectives and some of the guidelines of the pioneering initiative due to the national dimension that wants to achieve and by the involvement of private individuals.
The project, which is part of a protocol that the Government signed with Renault Nissan, aims to create an open network that, in 2010, should have 320 supply points spread across the national territory and could generate 22 thousand jobs, according to data already released by the Goveerno.
With a phased growth plan, this project aims to be a “living laboratory” for validating the interest and acceptance of the electric car model, creating an open network in which municipalities and companies are invited to participate, installing gas stations and connecting other services, such as the provision of parking. In the first phase, the project will have more than a dozen municipalities, of which the head of the Ministry of Economy and Innovation did not want to reveal the name.
The ability to evolve this model will depend on the interest of consumers in purchasing electric cars but also on the creativity of the initiatives developed by private individuals. And the possibilities are multiple. “In the near future we will be able to charge the electric car at home at night and when we park at work sell excess energy to the grid, becoming a flyby warehouse”, anticipates Francisca Duarte Pacheco.
Fatima Hunter
