What happens when you put hundreds of EV advocates in one place? The world’s biggest eMobility brainstorm. Over 500 participants tackled 4 pressing topics from the industry at rEVolution this year. The results were creative, yet concrete!
Amongst them were many energy utilities from The Netherlands and neighbouring countries. So we asked them about their vision on eMobility, and their predictions for the foreseeable future. Let’s dive straight in.
How can you provide a better charging experience for electric vehicle drivers in the short term?
#1 Bram Poeth, CEO eMobility Eneco: In co-creation with partners, we’ve developed this bundle project where you can lease your car and get a bundle with energy included, just like telephone bundles. And the cool thing here is that it doesn’t matter where you charge—whether it’s with a fast charger, at home, or at the workplace—you get the same price and it’s incorporated into your bundle. This didn’t exist before, but now we’ve put this on the market. I think it’s the way we should move forward. Innovation is what accelerates electric mobility, and in turn, happiness.
How can you contribute in the fight against global warming?
#2 Joris Hupperets, Director eMobility Netherlands/Germany, Nuon / Vattenfall: Our purpose is to become fossil-free in one generation. So basically, by 2050, we want to eliminate fossil fuels out of all our operations. We want to ensure that electric vehicles are charged with 100% renewable electricity, such as the electricity generated from our local wind farms.
And we try to lead by example by switching our entire fleet to electric vehicles in the next couple of years and sharing our experiences with other companies. We don’t believe that we should only rely on governments to take action. It’s companies who own a significant amount of the total car fleet across the globe. It’s also the companies that can support their employees in driving electric. So let’s not rely only on governments to take action, as a joint commitment from companies can make at least the same difference.
How does the future Smart City look like, and what needs to happen to make this a reality?
#3 Dennis Ostendorf, CCO, MAIN Energie: We have a lot of data, and with that, we can provide new products and technologies to improve smart cities. EVBox is one of the products we can work with to improve smart cities in the future. I think everybody is going to be driving an electric car around 30 years from now. Electric driving can be really fun. What will happen to our cars? The computers will take over. Maybe this will solve our traffic jams.
#4 Jörg Eggersdorfer, CFO, IBC SOLAR: The future of smart cities is decentralized in terms of energy production and storage. Now, we have decentralized energy production, storage systems, and soon, charging systems. The cycle is becoming broader and broader and a fully-green, sustainable industrial world might happen quite soon.
What does the future of daily commute look like, and how can we speed up this adoption process?
# Jacco van der Burg, General Manager Smart Mobility & Business Development, ENGIE: Daily commute will definitely be through EVs in cities, there’s no question about that. It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when. To speed up the process, I think some legislation and stimulation from the government needs to be in place. But also, if you look at it, it’s only a matter of time. The total cost of ownership is getting better by the day. In the long run, I also think you’ll be able to fly to work. From a different perspective, we see the Hyperloop as a real alternative for railway transportation. It has a 32-lane street capacity and the speed is really high (around 1500 km/h), which can also be increased. This way, you can even re-organize your entire country so that people can live in the countryside and work in the city.
5 forecasts on future eMobility
A new energy bundle that enables electric drivers to charge anywhere, anytime is already in place (via Eneco)
Act now: a call-to-action for companies to drive the change instead of waiting for regulations to catch up (via Nuon / Vattenfall)
Traffic jams might just be fixed by computers (via MAIN Energie)
Decentralization of energy is key to change as a greener industrial world is becoming more of a reality (via IBC SOLAR)
EVs and the Hyperloop are our way out of the daily commute challenges we’re facing (via ENGIE)
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