New European commissioner given e-mobility priorities

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyden has sent letters to each of her incoming commissioners setting out the key priorities for their new missions. And that means Greece’s Apostolos Tzitzikostas, commissioner for sustainable transport, as well as tourism, has received his instructions.

For e-mobility, there are three areas specified under a broader aim to “speed up the electrification of road transport”. The first is to “oversee the swift build-up of charging infrastructure and look at how to simplify the issue of charging fees and payment means”. That should be positive news for those investing in rolling out new chargers, as well as those developing better software to improve chargers’ operability.

Even more crucially, though, Tzitzikostas has been asked to “put forward a legislative proposal for clean corporate fleets”. This could have a significant impact on BEV adoption in Europe, as many of the continent’s fastest-moving countries are doing so precisely because of incentives offered to those buying cars through corporate schemes.

“Belgium, we say, is the new Norway,” Julia Poliscanova, senior director, vehicles & e-mobility at Brussels-based thinktank Transport & Environment (T&E) told an event last month. “And it's not because people in Belgium woke up and there are more EV fans than [in] other [countries].

"No, because here it is mostly company cars market and today it is simply the cheapest option to get an EV.” Belgian new BEV buying in the first ten months of 2024 is up by over 40pc year-on-year and all-electric has achieved almost 28pc penetration of the total new registration mix.

A legislative proposal to encourage corporate switching is “probably one of the initiatives we are desperate to see from commissioner Tzitzikostas when he starts”, Poliscanova continues. “Today, when you look at fleets, it is all about total cost of ownership and, when you look at total cost of ownership, electric vehicles are already the cheapest.

“But there is a barrier [with] the leasing sector… because they are uncertain about residual values,” she cautions. “In our view, it should be a regulation that would cover the leasing side — it would actually require leasing companies to sell high shares of zero emission vehicles.”

Such a regulation could represent “a massive step forward “, agrees Poliscanova’s T&E colleague Stef Cornelis, given that “60pc of new cars in the EU are corporate”.

“They drive on average twice as much than private and enter the used cars market after 3-4 years. In other words, this will change the dynamic in the EV market, boost demand for electric cars across the continent, slash transport emissions and accelerate the EV uptake in the used cars market,” he predicts.

Industrial strategy

The third pillar of Tzitzikostas’ e-mobility task is “to develop, as proposed by the Draghi report, an EU industrial action plan for the automotive sector”, which is no great surprise as we already knew this was in the new Commission’s work plan. Nonetheless, greater and more joined-up EU support for all the elements that the EU needs to build BEVs — access to battery raw materials and processing within Europe or from political allies, battery making and then car making — may be a necessity to rescue the industry from its current funk.

“We do need to do something about our manufacturing base,” says Poliscanova. “We really want to see successful battery factories… in Europe, but today it is not happening. We need a revamp of our industrial and trade policy to make it happen.”

“We really need more accessible sources of raw materials in the European Union,” adds Czech transport minister Martin Kupka. “A current comparison with Chinese cars and with American cars, is, for the European Union definitely not positive.

“We really need to bring better conditions for self-confident carmakers. It is a wake-up call for all of us and also for carmakers, because I am sure that there should be the possibility to change the production with the necessary equal, or better comparable conditions with America and China,” he continues.

No rightward lurch

That von der Leyden has set out three core policies on both the automotive and environmental lobbies should be able to agree is something of a relief, given the rather underwhelming appointment of Tzitzikostas to the brief. Something of a patrician dynastic politician — he comes from one of the wealthiest families in northern Greece and his father served as a government minister in the 70s, 80s and 90s — he has no appreciable transport expertise on his CV.

Potentially more worryingly, he is, like his father, seen as being on the right of his centre-right party, with past flirtations with the far right. While von der Leyen has forged a coalition between the centre-right, liberals and centre-left to get her new Commission through, that does not tie her entirely to a centrist agenda.

With von der Leyen’s rightist EPP not specifically prohibited from forming majorities with an increased number of far-right MEPs on certain issues, there have been fears that the EU could lurch right in specific areas. But her letter to Tzitzikostas suggests that rolling back on clean transport objectives will not be one of them.