South Korea has extended the electric vehicle subsidies until 2025 as they increased the budget. The support scheme, which would have expired in 2022, also include buying premiums for buses and trucks with battery-electric and hybrid drives.

New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo has announced an extensive investment program for e-mobility. The ‘EV Make Ready’ initiative includes the construction of 50,000 AC and 1,500 DC charging stations in the US state by 2025.

In Croatia, the online application procedure for the new call for funding for electric and hybrid vehicles had to be cancelled after only two minutes because so many applications were received from private individuals that the 2020 budget for the funding programme of €2.9M was exhausted.

The Italian government is launching a series of measures to tackle the pandemic economic crisis, including a temporary increase in subsidies for electric and hybrid vehicles.

The eCharge4Drivers project is to conduct demonstrations across key cities in the EU to understand better consumers’ perspective on EV charging infrastructure. As one of 32 stakeholders, ABB will test new DC charging stations to EU standards.

Today the European Commission has adopted the EU Strategy for Energy System Integration and Hydrogen. The former tackles charging infrastructure and grids, while the H2 Strategy focusses on long-haul and heavy-duty vehicles and hydrogen infrastructure.

In Germany, the Innovation Premium that spells out the doubling of the federal share of the Environmental Bonus for electric vehicles has come into force. The amended funding guidelines for the Environmental Bonus were published in the Federal Gazette, thus making it official.

The EDAG Group has started a joint research project with Hexagon Purus to develop a hybrid system of hydrogen and battery storage for integration into car floors. The customer should then be able to configure the number of storage units individually.

The Polish Ministry of Climate Change announced a few weeks ago that it intends to promote the purchase of electric buses with two programmes with a total volume of 90 million euros. Both support programmes are to make it easier for municipalities and districts to purchase electric buses for passenger transport.

Another £900,000 were committed by Transport Scotland towards the eBike Grant Fund for the 2020-2021 fiscal year. Round four of the grant programme is now available to assist the adoption of eBikes, eTrikes and electric cargo bikes in Scotland.

The Slovakian company InoBat Auto has provided further details of its planned research and production of electric car battery cells in cooperation with the US technology company Wildcat Discovery Technologies.

Varta has now received funding positive decisions from the Germany federal government and the states of Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg concerning 300 million euros for projects involving battery cells. The subsidy was approved by the EU Commission in December 2019 and the decisions have now been sent to Varta.

The Austrian government is increasing purchase premiums and subsidies for charging infrastructure for zero-emission and plug-in hybrid vehicles from 1 July. This includes zero-emission and plug-in hybrid cars, zero-emission heavy and light commercial vehicles, zero-emission buses, and electric two-wheelers – including e-motorbikes, mopeds, e-bikes and e-cargo bikes. 

McDonald’s wants to set up hundreds of fast charging points for electric cars branches in Great Britain in cooperation with InstaVolt. The rapid chargers are designed for charging capacities of up to 125 kW. New Aldi branches in the UK are also to receive charging points – but at a much slower rate.

The UK government has awarded £73.5 million in funding through the Advanced Propulsion Centre. This includes ten projects in the automotive sector to develop technologies to reduce CO2 emissions. A significant proportion of the money is being spent on furthering electric vehicle production and technology.

The EU-funded project COBRA (CObalt-free Batteries for FutuRe Automotive Applications) aims to develop next-generation cobalt-free batteries. The project also aims to eliminate the need for other critical materials.

The European Commission supports the establishment of charging stations for electric vehicles in Schleswig-Holstein through the German state. At least 1,500 additional charging points are to be created in Germany’s northernmost federal state and up to six bus depots are to be equipped with charging stations.

Transports Metropolitans de Barcelona (TMB) is also relying on hydrogen as part of the conversion of its bus fleet. After TMB had ordered a total of 23 articulated battery-electric buses from Solaris and Irizar in February, a tender for the purchase of the first fuel cell buses has now been launched.

In the UK, special license plates for zero-emission vehicles will be introduced starting this autumn. The UK government has also announced £12 million in research and development grants.

The start-ups Britishvolt and AMTE Power have provided details of their plans to build a battery cell factory for electric cars with a capacity of 30 to 35 GWh with the support of the British Government. The first stage is set for completion by 2023.

In Germany, Renault is increasing its manufacturer’s share for subsidising the purchase of its electric vehicles. From now on, private customers will receive a bonus of 10,000 euros when buying a new Zoe or Kangoo Z.E. But the discount has a catch.

The British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is considering a premium of up to £6,000 for the exchange of a diesel or petrol car for an electric vehicle with an official announcement expected on 6 July. There are also rumours that Tesla might plan a Gigafactory on the Isles.

The Greek government has announced extensive subsidies to foster electric mobility in the country. The goal is for every third vehicle to be electric by 2030 as the country introduces purchase premiums as well as furthering charging infrastructure.

In an economic stimulus package following the Corona crisis, the German government has included several measures to promote electric mobility. The most powerful one is that the state is doubling its share of the environmental bonus in the form of a new “innovation premium”.

The British research project RaRE has set itself the goal of setting up a continuous supply chain to integrate recycled rare earth magnets into electric vehicles. Bentley is one of the companies involved in the project, which is led by HyProMag, a spin-off from the University of Birmingham.

The EU Commission has apparently drawn up initial proposals for an economic and climate protection package in the transport sector worth up to 100 billion euros. Among other things, the plans outline a purchase premium for ‘cleaner cars’. There is apparently still some dispute about which cars should be included.

The British Department of Transport (DfT) has set new targets for the expansion of ultra-rapid charging infrastructure for electric vehicles. The plans envision the construction of at least six HPC sites along motorways by 2023.

Initially, Poland had planned start spending a lavish purchase premium of 8,600 euros for low-cost electric cars from December. Then the country postponed the subsidy indefinitely for a short time. Nevertheless, e-car registrations are rising – a placebo effect?

The Leipzig transport authority (LVB) has ordered their first electric buses for use in regular service and awarded the contract to the Dutch manufacturer VDL Bus & Coach. They are to supply 21 electric buses to Saxony by the end of this year.

Spain’s government is working on the new edition of its eMobility subsidy program MOVES for 2020, and although the details are not to be officially published until the end of May (beginning of June at the latest), some information has already been leaked.