Supporting 'smart electric mobility' in cities

In order to integrate electromobility in their Sustainable Mobility Plans, European cities need to equip themselves with a network of electric recharging stations for electric cars and L-category vehicles. This will help the market to grow, as potentially interested consumers tend not to buy electric vehicles because they are not confident enough about the opportunities to recharge them. However, the real business models do not yet exist. The establishment of recharging infrastructure for electric vehicles is expensive and, without additional financial support and/or new approaches, there is a first-mover disadvantage until there are enough vehicles to make the investments profitable.

Scope

Proposals should focus on the development of integrated approaches and testing of "business" models for the local production and distribution of electricity together with electric vehicles fleet, to create the conditions for market take up in urban and sub-urban areas. This could include private and public recharging stations. Approaches could include e.g. charging at work places, private parking places, homes, public spaces, transport intermodal hubs, system integration of large fleets of electric vehicles (BEVs and PHEVs), multimodal platforms, etc. Specific tests and pilots focussing on the integration of solutions into transport system, in combination with a cross-site evaluation, could be carried out. Possible barriers and ways to overcome these barriers to deploy integrated solutions and business models for electric recharging should be identified. Where relevant, potential gender differences should be investigated.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of between EUR 4 to 5 million each would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

In order to maximise the impact in this topic, the focus of investments planned in these proposals should be on developing integrated approaches and testing of business models, rather than purchasing the actual clean vehicles and their appropriate infrastructure.

Expected Impact

Tested and validated business models for electromobility solutions regarding:

• Large scale, sustainable and decentralised energy production and distribution (also from transport infrastructure itself) in balance with local use.
• Simple, interoperable, convenient and intelligent billing systems ensuring at the same time a safe and reliable data exchange in cities. This includes integrated energy infrastructure systems, bringing together technologies from the energy, infrastructure and transport domains.
• Emergent integrated approaches and business models for recharging, looking – among others – at consumer acceptance, value models and ownership.
• Projects should bring innovative tools and recommendations to integrate electromobility in SUMPs (for example, planning policies and use of urban space), as well as recommendations for common standards of ultra-low emissions urban areas.
• On the basis of clear commitments from participants for a further Europe-wide take-up and rollout of results during and following the project are expected.

The project proposal should include an estimation of CO2 savings obtained through the sustainable urban mobility solutions deployed in the project, on the basis of CO2 intensity of the European electricity grid of 540 g CO2/kW-h. It should also provide information on how this estimate is calculated, for example on the basis of the size of the entire vehicle fleet powered by electricity that will be deployed in the project, and/or on the number of the recharging in the infrastructure that will be deployed in the project.