Sustainability is of absolute importance and the main priority in our municipality. With this in mind, the leadership at the last conference of August have decided to bring up a proposal named “the next big investment” at the coming city council.
The proposal concerns a possible investment in electric vehicles, abbreviated ev, in the form of public busses, small trucks, employee cars, and complementary infrastructure. It is radical in the sense that the leadership plans to transform the municipality car fleet completely and heavily invest in the infrastructure needed to drastically increase the number of electric vehicles in our town and rural areas. An ambitious number of 500 charging stations are planned for, and additionally 150 are in the possible outline. The investment would be to increase the current number of charging points by approximately two hundred percent.
It comes to no surprise that the cost of such an investment will be humongous, a burden that, if the proponents get their way, will be shared by many generations of taxpayers to come. They argue that it is reasonable that the ev charging platform payment can be written off over thirty-five years and that the vehicles, along with the hardware for the charging stations, can be written off over a twelve-year time period.
The technicalities of the proposal are significant and most likely have the leadership used consultants for some of the more complex and technical aspects. In the deal from the companies that the board has taken offers from is an emobility service provider mobile app included. To an inexperienced reader, it may be challenging to understand how, but the app, along with the state-of-the-art electric vehicle charge station billing system, will make the charging stations profitable as long as they are used to their full capacity.
The critical question is; will they be used enough? The politicians assume that a local initiative along with the tax incentives imposed on the state level will be enough to motivate the locals to invest in electric cars and charge them in the municipality’s charging stations. It could be argued that this is not enough since the state funding is dependent on the existing government staying in power, which is highly uncertain to say the least, and the simple fact that electric cars are expensive. Probably too expensive for the majority of the urban population.
It is difficult to predict if the city council will accept the “the next big investment” proposal. If it passes, it will change the transportation in our municipality in a fundamental way.
Do you think it will be a positive change? Or worsen an already precarious economic situation? Let us know in the comments.
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